The risk for SMBs in today’s cyber-landscape is growing year after year. There is an increase in the number of breaches and the frequency of them. Historically, cyber-criminals have targeted large enterprises in hopes of a big pay day, but in recent times attackers have used automation to target many small businesses at the same time. Other two large components of the increased risk are the shortage of cybersecurity talent and a lack of security adoption by SMBs. Most cybersecurity products are complicated, and many cyber experts have trouble articulating problems in the SMB market. It is therefore important than ever for businesses to use a unified suite of protection to detect advanced threats. By combining email protection, endpoint protection, and security monitoring into their analytics platform SKOUT is able to provide that protection.
Founded in 2013, SKOUT is a cloud-native, streaming data analytics platform built to deliver effective and affordable cybersecurity products for SMBs, delivered by MSPs. Currently headquartered in Melville, New York SKOUT also has offices in New York City and Portloise, Ireland.
“We pride ourselves on making cybersecurity products that are not only effective, but also easy for businesses to implement and use,” says Aidan Kehoe, Co-Founder, and CEO of SKOUT CYBERSECURITY.
Find Trouble Before, Trouble Finds You
SKOUT has successfully differentiated itself in an increasingly crowded cybersecurity marketplace by providing best-in-class technology, cutting-edge analytics, and AI to monitor and protect organizations— delivered with superb customer service, making the solution easy to use.
How does it work? When managed service providers partner with SKOUT they use its cloud-based streaming data analytics platform that monitors and alerts their end-users based on pre-agreed risk ratings. SKOUT data analytics correlates threats and their team of SOC analysts looks into any anomalies and reports it to the MSP for remediation. As the platform is built with modern technology architecture it allows MSPs to deploy robust security offering to any of their end-users in a short amount of time regardless of where their data resides. Again, the SKOUT platform enables organizations to provide cybersecurity without new personnel by augmenting human capabilities with Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. “We aggregate our threat intelligence from the government and private-sector sources and layer it into your real-time data analytics looking for anomalies,” says Kehoe. “Our platform is capable of anomaly-based detection and can discover new malware that would bypass traditional signature-based detection.” Flexible integrations and a ‘Write-Once, Deploy Anywhere’ architecture make cybersecurity accessible to every business. “Our platform puts all of the pieces together so that MSPs and the SMBs they serve don’t need to invest in cybersecurity tools and staff internally,” affirms Kehoe.
Aidan Kehoe, Co-Founder & CEO, SKOUT CYBERSECURITY.
The platform brings together the three components that SMBs need most: security monitoring, email protection, and endpoint protection all for an affordable price for the end-user with high margins for the MSPs who are selling the platform. The platform uses a three-pronged approach utilizing log monitoring with live analysts who are available 24/7, email protection and endpoint protection which provides layers of protection to defend against ransomware and phishing. SKOUT’s email protection also puts a banner in the body of the email flagging its risk level based on certain factors. This teaches users to spot indicators of phishing and adds them into the security hygiene of the organization by allowing them to report emails that are suspicious. “We create our products in a way that SMB business owners can learn about their risk and problems and also understand what constitutes good cybersecurity practices,” shares Kehoe.
Additionally, the company releases threat advisories to their end-users on a weekly basis that walk them through best practices for dealing with emerging threats. Lastly, the company also offers security awareness training to organizations. “I care about the security problem, I’m grateful that I get to work every day on protecting people and having real purpose driving the work,” says Kehoe. “I truly believe that the majority of people in security are purpose-driven in their work whether they admit it or not.”
So are the seasoned team of cybersecurity professionals at SKOUT. “At SKOUT, the thing I value most about our culture is our team’s relentless focus on doing the right thing. Your values are driven by how you act during difficult times, that’s what your culture really is. I’m proud of the fact that we do the right thing even when it’s most difficult,” carries on Kehoe. “Most jobs don’t have consequences if we don’t do our job every day bad things can happen to our clients. That’s more than enough motivation for us to keep striving here.”
Democratizing Security
As an organization, that has set its sight on making cybersecurity easy and accessible to everyone. SKOUT is always looking for ways to spread their cybersecurity expertise and hit a wider audience. So, they decided to take a product that almost every house in the US has, Amazon Alexa, and build two branded skills to teach new audiences about cybersecurity terms and threats. One of the skills integrates with the news briefing function of an Alexa and announces the most recent threat advisory. The second skill allows a user to ask the Alexa about cybersecurity terms and get a layman’s term explanation. “This allowed us to deliver on our mission outside of our day to day business,” cheers Kehoe.
When Kehoe is not working on solving cybersecurity problems, he can be found meditating, enjoying music and spending time with his family.
A Safer World
The company is hard at work to protect as many businesses as possible and is constantly improving its platform to stop new threats before they turn into major problems. The company will continue to focus on enabling MSPs to become work clad cybersecurity providers. So, they plan on heavily investing in the team and technology to make this happen. Finally, with the vision to ‘make cybersecurity accessible to everyone’, SKOUT aims to become the #1 to cybersecurity provider MSP’s and their customers by 2021.
“We will have filled our aspirations as a company when we’ve made cybersecurity accessible to everyone, that’s a long way away so we’ve got a lot of work to do,” says Kehoe.
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