Acalvio has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as the recipient of “Top 10 Networking Solution Companies - 2019,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the CIOReview research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Nat D. Natraj, Co-Founder and President.

Acalvio
The Art of Deceptive Defense

Nat D. Natraj, Co-Founder and President

“All warfare is based on deception…” -Sun Tzu.

While war and its many connotations have changed over the years, the principle still holds— adversaries present seemingly bona fide realities to confuse and misinform the opponent into making a mistake, and inevitably expose his weakness. Today the battlefield is cyberspace and the war, is over data, intellectual property and information assets; information that we take for granted, now is a kingdom worth defending. If anything, cyberattacks in the last decade have shown the relevance of Tzu’s tactics. Autonomous deception leads the way for a more agile way of detecting, engaging and responding to malicious activity within a network, the very forte of Acalvio.

“In computer security, the enterprise is dealing with an asymmetric war, one where the defendant needs to be right all the time while the attackers need only be once, with no penalties for retrying,” says Nat D. Natraj, Co-founder and President of Acalvio. The company seeks to even the odds, or better still, invert it all together so that even an iota of error on the wrong actor’s part would lead to their discovery in the system. They do so by creating deceptive systems, with assets that look as real as the real deal, undetected by the enemy. The moment that the adversary touches the decoy, the Deception Fabric instantly knows of a potential breach. Acalvio creates a fake network with specific vulnerable points as bait and thus confuse, delay and then catch the attacker red-handed.

Nowadays the risk is high with trends like BYOD, IoT and SaaS, the traditional notion of a well-defined, and a clearly-marked perimeter no longer apply. Our perimeter is porous not due to negligence but by design. Our perimeter defenses (firewalls, endpoint security) are working just fine, it is just that our business imperatives have encompassed BYOD, IoT and SaaS, thus necessitating an advanced defense mechanism. Threats have to be detected with very high precision (low false positives) and in a timely manner, which is where the deception comes into play.

In computer security, the enterprise is dealing with an asymmetric war, one where the defendant needs to be right all the time while the attackers need only be once, with no penalties for retrying

Acalvio can do this at Enterprise scale and even IoT Scale, from the cloud and for the cloud. By scanning the network of an enterprise, or by consuming vulnerability manager data, Acalvio can develop an asset topology and it’s AI engine can generate (realistic looking) fake assets and subsequently automate the deployments of decoys at Enterprise Scale. The decoys can be deployed from an on-premise appliance or from the cloud to protect on-premises or cloud assets. The solution can do cloud to cloud decoys, on-premise to cloud decoys, cloud to on-premise or on-premise to on-premise, Acalvio are very flexible in that respect. ShadowPlex provides dashboards that can be used by IR/SOC personnel. In addition, ShadowPlex provides APIs so that its Deception capabilities can be integrated with 3rd party IR, SOC, SIEM, Service Management solutions.

The company will be increasing their channels of capabilities around the market adding new and different kind of decoys of different types of verticals like the retail industry and healthcare. They see huge growth in the cloud, and as more people move to the cloud. The rising tide of attacks may mean that companies stay ever vigilant on the back foot, but with Acalvio, the attackers would no sooner be caught with their paw in the jar.

Acalvio

Acalvio Recognized as a Tech Innovator in Gartner® 2023 Emerging Tech: Security — Tech Innovators in Automated Moving Target Defense

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

SANTA CLARA, Calif: Acalvio Technologies, the leader in cyber deception technology, today announced the company’s inclusion in the Gartner “Emerging Tech: Security - Emergence Cycle for Automated Moving Target Defense (AMTD)” report1. Acalvio views the report as evaluating innovative vendors raising the bar in AMTD technologies and offering best practices and recommendations for bringing AMTD solutions to market.

Gartner identified that, “Security teams are overwhelmed with having to supply reactive detection and response. They struggle with high alert volumes and false-positives. Consequently, there is a high demand for solutions that effectively protect and strengthen cybersecurity.”

In a previous report titled, “Emerging Tech: Security –The Future of Cyber Is Automated Moving Target Defense”2, published in February 2023, Gartner states, “At its core, AMTD incorporates four main elements: proactive cyber defense mechanisms, automation to orchestrate movement or change in the attack surface, the use of deception technologies, and the ability to execute intelligent (preplanned) change decisions.”

“Acalvio’s rich Active Defense and ITDR capabilities provide customers with a layered defense that addresses all four elements of AMTD,” said Ram Varadarajan, Co-Founder and CEO of Acalvio. “Gartner’s Tech Innovators in Automated Moving Target Defense report offers an important analysis of how and why layered solutions have become critical in building a more robust cybersecurity defense.”

According to the Tech Innovators report, “AMTD solutions make things much more difficult and more costly for cyberattackers. They change the traditional ‘static’ nature of IT environments by proactively and continuously making changes within the environment to confuse, disrupt and block attackers. By introducing variables that change services or infrastructure unexpectedly, routinely, on-demand or as a response, defenders can more effectively identify, understand and block attackers.”

“A layered defense consisting of AMTD deceptions significantly elevates an organization’s security posture,” said Carl Manion, Managing Vice President of Cybersecurity Emerging Technologies and Trends at Gartner. “Acalvio provides rich deception capabilities that can take an attacker in the wrong direction to protect both IT and operational technology (OT) environments.”

The full “Emerging Tech: Security — Tech Innovators in Automated Moving Target Defense” report can be found on the Gartner website.

1Gartner® 2023 Emerging Tech: Security — Tech Innovators in Automated Moving Target Defense, By Mark Pohto, Carl Manion, Published 7 June 2023.

2Gartner® 2023 Emerging Tech: Security — The Future of Cyber Is Automated Moving Target Defense, By Lawrence Pingree, Carl Manion, Matt Milone, Sean ONeill, Travis Lee, Mark Pohto, Mark Wah, Ruggero Contu, Dan Ayoub, Elizabeth Kim, Rustam Malik, Nat Smith, Published 28 February 2023.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Velaspan Partners with Acalvio for Managed Cyber Deception Service

Thursday, January 18, 2024

SANTA CLARA, CA, USA-- Velaspan, a leading managed wireless and cybersecurity provider, announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with Acalvio Technologies, the leader in AI-powered cyber deception, and will launch a new managed service using Acalvio’s industry-leading ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense.

The Velaspan Active Cyber Engagement (ACE) service leverages ShadowPlex to help customers add a proactive cyber deception-based defense against insider or outsider threats, zero-day threats and ransomware. ACE makes all of the benefits of cyber deception technology available to its customers using the Velaspan security operations center (SOC) so that it easy to deploy and doesn’t increase the workload of overworked security teams.

More details about the new service are available in a separate press release.

ACE is part of Velaspan’s strategy to create a full suite of managed cybersecurity services that leverage the company’s service delivery expertise.

“We are expanding the market for AI-powered cyber deception technology, and we welcome Velaspan as a partner to help us a jointly market and evangelize deception technology to actively defend against advanced security threats,” said Anand Akela, Chief Marketing Officer, of Acalvio Technologies. “We look forward to growing together with Velaspan.”

“We have built trusted relationships with large and small customers across the country who have told us they are searching for ways to respond to cyber security attacks,” said Jim Kreutel, Vice President of Marketing at Velaspan. “By leveraging our managed services know-how and Acalvio’s advanced technology we are now delivering an active defense solution that meets those needs.”

Top 10 Networking Solution Companies - 2019

Company
Acalvio

Management
Nat D. Natraj, Co-Founder and President

Description
Leveraging their platform " ShadowPlex", they provide innovative defense solutions in Cloud, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and SDN (Software Defined Networking). The solutions are anchored on patented innovations in Deception and Data Science. This enables a DevOps approach to ATD, enabling ease of deployment, monitoring and management. Acalvio enriches its threat intelligence by data obtained from internal and partner ecosystems, enabling customers to benefit from defense in depth, reduce false positives, and derive actionable intelligence for remediation. The firm allows security practitioners in detecting, engaging and responding to malicious activity with high precision in a timely and cost-effective fashion

Acalvio The Art of Deceptive Defense