“The industry has woken up to the benefits of AI and machine learning”
Part of Cognosec’s Partner Profile series, we interview Lloyd Webb, Cylance Sales Engineering Director for EMEA who explains what the company does, discusses the recent ransomware attack and highlights the benefits of ClylancePROTECT.
Could you explain briefly what Cylance does and what it provides?
The short version is that Cylance provides ‘AI for AV’ i.e. artificial intelligence for antivirus. The longer version is that Cylance is the first company to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to the problem of cybersecurity. Cylance provides next-generation endpoint technology that predicts and prevents known malicious attacks and more importantly, unknown attacks from infecting your computer. Cylance is also known for its advanced incident response services that leverage our AI technology.
Does Cylance work with companies of varying size and number of endpoints?
Every organisation, from very small to multi-nationals are impacted by the inadequacies of the current security controls available coupled with the ever-growing volume of attacks and new variants of malware, so there is no particular customer vertical or customer size that we work with the most. We have clients ranging from 50 endpoints, all the way up to 400,000 endpoints.
With the threat of ransomware hitting the headlines recently, how can Cylance help organizations defend against such attacks?
There is, of course, a lot of noise in the industry after the recent events hit the headlines, and as a company, we are conscious of staying as humble as possible. What has become clear, however, is that traditional security controls continue to let people and companies down, and as such, the industry has woken up to the benefits of AI and machine learning. This was a journey that Cylance started some five years ago, and our solution has matured to a point where we regularly prevent new attacks, such as new ransomware campaigns, without any regular updates.
What is CylancePROTECT? What benefit can it bring to an organization?
CylancePROTECT is an endpoint agent designed to be highly efficient and silent in nature to the end-user. It has a unique pre-execution capability where new and unknown malware can be analysed in less than 100ms and prevented from successfully executing on the endpoint, therefore preventing infection.
Does CylancePROTECT require constant updates?
We find that organisations struggle to not only keep their systems patched, but also struggle to maintain the number of security updates to their security tools to remain secure. CylancePROTECT only requires a few updates per year and is also designed to make accurate decisions while on the road or disconnected from the Internet.
Do you think AI will continue to be at the forefront for defending businesses against cyberattacks?
What is clear is that humans don’t scale anywhere close to computers for hard problems such as making sense of large amounts of data. From history’s perspective, if we look back to the first industrial revolution, machines freed the human race from the limits of muscle power. With AI, computers are freeing humans from the limits of brainpower. AI is an incredible tool that helps organisations defend their systems and spend more time focusing on their businesses.
And finally, why does Cylance work with Cognosec?
Cylance partners with elite cybersecurity resellers across the globe, and Cognosec certainly fits into that camp. With their multi-national footprint, deep focus on security products, solutions, and services, as well as a speciality in managed endpoint security services, Cognosec holds a very strategic position within our partner ecosystem. Over the coming years, we very much look forward to building on the great success we have had to date.
