We spent the past six months reviewing the current state of industrial control systems cybersecurity. We talked to more than one hundred domain experts, from operators to researchers, consultants to entrepreneurs, investors to academics. We have been writing publicly about potential startup ideas here.
This is the post you’ve been waiting for.
We’re starting Galvanick.
How did we get here?
Over the past thirty years, industrial enterprises have replaced manually-operated with computer-operated heavy equipment. These decisions have traded short term increased efficiency gains for long term unknown and potentially catastrophic downside risk.
These industrial control systems (ICS) are now under increasingly frequent cyber attacks. Hackers can compromise drug manufacturing, turn off safety systems at oil refineries, spoil millions of pounds of meat, and poison the water supply. These attacks can cost billions, impact uptime, and compromise safety.
Problem
Current-generation ICS cybersecurity solutions generate data to be consumed by humans using spreadsheets and jury-rigged event monitoring tools. The volume, variety, or lack of information often exceeds human ability to rapidly move through John Boyd’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop.
The human at the center needs to quickly process 10-15 different data sources across an ICS network, from endpoints to applications to appliances, to find the “needle in a needle-stack”.
Solution
Build a common data aggregation, analytics, and reporting layer that delivers context to operators: faster decisions, faster actions, and lower risk.
Benefit
Augment security teams to help them protect their alpha-generating infrastructure. Short term goal: quickly detect bad things happening by streamlining “observation” and “orientation.” Long-term goal: continuously identify emerging threats across our entire customer base.
What’s Next?
We need your help to make contact with security teams that are overloaded with information coming off of their industrial control systems. If you’ve got contacts you’re willing to offer up, or if you want to help us take on this mission, get in touch by filling out this form (link).
And stay tuned. I’ll continue providing regular updates and insights as we go.
We’re just getting started.
Introducing Galvanick