Comprehensive Defense Strategy with CySight’s Rafi Sabel | AWS re:Invent 2023

This is Textron tv, And we are back at AWS Reinvent 2023. My name is Sheila Rubinoff. I'm the Chief Cybersecurity Officer for Textron, and we're streaming live this whole week over here in Las Vegas.

I'm here with Raffi Sable, the CEO of Sci cite. Raffi. Such a pleasure to be speaking with you again.

Hi, Sharon. Thank you very much. And it's absolute president.

Pleasure to always, uh, talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Rafi.

So Rafi, I'd love you to introduce yourself to the audience, tell them a little bit about who you are, your background, and then we'll jump right into Sci cite. Sure. Um, Rafi Sable, I'm the the CEO and founder of uh, s site.

Um, and I've been working with, uh, customers of all shapes and sizes for, for many years in network monitoring and cybersecurity and visibility of, of networks, really some very large companies, some of the largest on the planet. Um, we've helped government customers and universities and campuses and, uh, financials to, to help, uh, help them gain visibility. So that's, you know, that's what I've been doing over the last few years.

So, wonderful. And I'm very excited about your company. You're really in a wonderful space.

And let's jump right in. Why don't you introduce our everybody to s site who is S site, and tell us your story. Sure.

So, yeah, look, um, as I say, we've been around in, in the space for, for a long time understanding, uh, the, the issues that customers are having with visibility. And, you know, s site was, uh, ultimately born out of the recognition that the traditional poach to, to cybersecurity, which often relies on, uh, fragmented and isolated tools, is just no longer sufficient to protect the valuable dis digital assets, um, in the f especially in the face of the ever evolving threat landscape. So, you know, there were, there's several drivers that led us to the development of SCI site.

Um, you know, in particular we saw the, how the lack of visibility coupled, uh, as, especially now with the sudden and exponential use of encryption within networks presents an entirely new challenge to, to customers. Um, and we've really, we've entered the, the age of encryption. This is a time that, um, you know, we've hit a period where data in motion, 98% of data in motion is encrypted.

So, um, you know, that means that, uh, traditional tools are not able to see what's going on under the veil of encryption. Um, they're, they're collecting minuscule amounts of data out of those networks. And, um, you know, we, we, we see companies unprepared to, to deal with these risks thinking that they, they have the visibility that they need to, to manage risk, um, but they're, they're in danger because a lot of, uh, a lot of issues and malware is really sneaking, uh, sneaking undercover at the moment.

So what does S site do? What do you come in and do for your clients and your customers? Well, Well, s site is, is unique in, in that it's, um, it collects data out of the network and, and it scrutinizes all the interactions between the, the servers, between the, the clouds, the data centers, the users, the applications, and evaluates all the risk of each of these different, uh, aspects, you know, whether it's it's country risk or, or, uh, or, uh, site risk or, uh, dark web risk.

Um, and we're bringing all of this information in. We're using, um, machine learning and baselining, and we have a level of, of retention within our solution that provides over 20 times more visibility than, you know, most tools combined. Um, and that means that we can use that AI detection to overcome decryption limitations.

We can, uh, you know, provide a level of visibility of, of identifying what's going on below the surface of the traffic. And essentially, we, we are providing an integrated solution that is a, is a comprehensive tool that covers both the networks, the endpoints, and, um, it's essentially a, a managed detection and response suite in a box. So we're covering and integrating network detection response, endpoint detection response with deep forensics.

And we are using AI to, to pull out the, the needles from the haystack to show what changes are occurring within the environment and the servers and the, the, the data at risk, you know, whether it's, uh, it's reconnaissance that we're identifying or, uh, or infiltration or exfiltration and, uh, you know, data going across VPNs and tour networks and BitTorrent. And we're triaging that information together. So we really are providing a very unique, highly lever, uh, revolutionary cybersecurity solution.

Oh, very interesting. And let's dial it down for our audience in terms of, you know, cybersecurity marketplace is very crowded space. How are you different from your competitors out there?

What is your secret sauce? What is something that people say, you know, what s side is the way to go? Well, firstly, um, you know, it all starts with, with, with data, because if you don't have, uh, access to big data and, and, and, uh, a large learning, uh, environment for machine learning to take place, then you are going to miss a lot of the, the patterns that, that we can elicit out of the data.

And other tools in our space are collecting, you know, uh, around one to 5% of the top of the data. Whereas s site at its, at its, uh, base layer is, uh, collecting and absorbing and retaining and using a large amount of the metadata that is, that is, uh, running through the network. So we really are, uh, have a, a huge resource at, at our base that nobody else has.

And then we use that, uh, that resource to learn about the environment, to baseline the environment, uh, and to, and to detect, uh, change within the environment right down to, to the, the, the server level, the user level, or on a larger level, a, a micros segmenting the network so that we can provide, uh, uh, levels of trust within the, the communication of what's, what's impacting what part of the network and where, and, and what, what the cost and, and impact is gonna be to the business at the end of the day. Well, certainly trust is a key factor when it comes to all of this. So who would be your ideal customer?

A lot of people are watching these interviews and they're trying to learn about all these new companies and these great companies that are taking the, the top headlines over here. Who would be the ideal customer for s site? Well, look, um, the, any, any customer that has, uh, has data centers, has data, has data centers that assets that they want to protect, um, has difficulty with visibility in, in seeing what's going across their network.

These are the kinds of, of, of customers. And that really then splits into the different verticals, whether it's, um, you know, financial institutions or healthcare or ISPs and MSPs who are also tasked with the cybersecurity of their customers. Mm-Hmm.

Um, government organizations or go government bodies who have, um, uh, a high degree of, of compliance. Um, so, you know, and, and some of these can be smaller, uh, bodies and something can be incredibly large. Uh, you know, and, and each one has, has a, a different, uh, uh, a different value orientation pro proposition.

If you look at the banking, you know, um, more than I think the stack was more than 60% of global financial institutions with at least $5 billion in assets were hit by a variety of cyber attacks in 2022. So you, you know, that's, that's the financial sector alone. You look at, uh, at government organizations, there's leakages, there's health, healthcare, there's data leakages of, of, uh, social security services, uh, smart cities.

The the more we go into, into data and the more we go into to, you know, giving our data to, to, uh, organizations, the chances of that data being, uh, made public becomes that much higher. And we're trying to really protect our customers, provide them a level of visibility that is unprecedented, help them to see both the real time issues as well as the backtrack, uh, backtrack ability of those issues. You know, because sometimes you, you only discover things well after the fact.

Um, very true. You know, the, the sun, the sunburst virus was, uh, well, a, a case in point, you know, which, um, um, which is still, uh, uh, uh, rattling through the, the government, uh, in, in, uh, in various governments around the world and large organizations. And that was a very difficult issue to deal with because here we had only after the fact the IP addresses published of those particular sunburst, uh, attackers, and now we had to wade back through the history of the data to try and find what was impacted and which services and service were, were, uh, party or conversing with, um, with that malware.

Oh, that's very back trackability or, or, or real time functions that both have a, a, a case and we provide access to both, Certainly. And I know that s side has been growing and, uh, coming out with all new announcements. And is there anything new you wanna share in terms of the lead leader scope that's been coming outta SCI site with our audience?

Um, well, we, we are continually innovating. I mean, we, That's always important. We really pushed, we've really pushed the, the, the boundaries and, and we're, we're providing our customers a, a, a level of, of visibility.

We are, we're, uh, a highly level revolutionary product in, in, in an industry that is, uh, has, you know, solutions that are, are, are really only dealing with a, a slice of what we do as a, as a whole. So, you know, we are, we're addressing the industry challenges. We're addressing, uh, organizational challenges.

We're addressing the individual, uh, uh, challenges of the CISO within the organization. And, um, you know, as part of a defense in in depth strategy, we're, we're helping to, to, to bring out layers of, of, of visibility that were, uh, or aren't available in the marketplace besides, uh, SCI site today. So that should, uh, provide customers with, with a huge peace of mind that there is a tool that is going to give them that, that level of visibility to detect and to, to track.

That's excellent. And I always ask my interviewees, is there any specific tips, any cyber tips you wanna leave our audience with? You know, there's, everybody's a wealth of information.

I know you certainly have been in the industry for a long time, have many successes and have great insight in the cyber world itself. And it could be about sci side, it could be about anything specific that makes you feel passionate about the cybersecurity world. Well, I think the, the thing that should be that, that I really would like to tell customers and is that you need to appreciate that there's been a, a, a really unprecedented change, and we're at an inflection point in our marketplace in cybersecurity in particular, because of encryption.

So, you know, um, encryption is, is, is a wonderful thing. It protects data in motion, and it sounds like a great thing because it's a secret code that, that keeps the digital messages and sensitive information safe from, from prying eyes. But at the same time, you know, en encryption, um, as it's, as it's flooded, the, the, the wave of encryption as it's flooded into, into the marketplace today is, is really causing many of our traditional tools to become obsolete.

Um, and, you know, a a a new tool is, is needed to, to provide the visibility of what's going on under the surface of encryption and the veil of encryption. Uh, because that's really, you know, as, as, uh, we are dealing with, with advanced threats, malware that is now sneaking under the, the, the veil of encryption into networks and laterally moving around. So, um, it's a good thing and it's a bad thing, and it's something that we should be facing straight on.

And so many customers and so many, uh, uh, engineers in the marketplace today are still thinking they're okay, but they're dealing with only one to 2% visibility. And, you know, it's a wonder, uh, why, uh, or they wonder why they, they, they're being hacked. Right.

Because you can't, you can't control what you can't see. Very, very true. Well, Raffi, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you for sharing your valuable insight with our audience. I know here at AWS and the world around the cyber world, they've all really enjoyed this conversation and I encourage everybody to take a look at SCI site, and I look forward to speaking with you again soon, Rafi. Thanks so much, Shira.

Thank you. Absolutely pleasure. And we'll be back with Techstrong shortly.

Thank you.