The Problem

We all know it. Each of us can feel it gnawing at the back of our minds. It’s there every time someone mentions another data breach. Social Security Numbers, banking information, passwords… again. When we check and still have money in our bank accounts, we move on. What else can you do? It goes away for a while until some non-technical person shows you an astoundingly useful app they generated in an hour with some new tool. If a well-intentioned person who’s never coded can create something this powerful… what will seasoned malicious actors create next?

This AI age is as exciting as it is scary. Since companies with household names and large security teams can’t protect themselves, what hope do smaller companies have against these new apex AI predators? No doubt, AI will fight AI, but this isn’t a whole solution because AI hasn’t solved the problem. The origin of all technological security issues is identity. A vulnerability is only a risk if there is someone with the intent of exploiting it. Consider the first security device: Caesar’s two-ringed cipher. It created the ability to split people into two groups: those who could read encoded messages and those who could not. Fast forward two thousand years and we find the identical principle at work in modern computing. The problem has never been the encoding or buggy code, it has always been a matter of who. Who is reading the message – a trusted agent? Who is executing that command on an AWS server – a hacker causing a data breach or just our System Admin closing a ticket? As far as AI has come, it cannot accurately detect motive. Even now with mature AI detection built into security tools, the headlines are clear: Cybersecurity isn’t working.

It’s time to change how the game is played.

The Solution

What if you could solve this problem of identity to a reasonable conclusion? Perfection? Of course not. But within acceptable limits. What if you could secure and audit your company so well, even AI-backed malicious actors would likely give up before being able to inflict damage? What if identity were no longer the fatal issue because the door is truly shut, the entries guarded, and there is truly no one in here who is not supposed to be. AI has so much to teach us, but let’s not forsake what we’ve already learned. Ironclad, ancient IT concepts should be reforged into today’s brash new age – not forgotten.

We don’t know what brought you here or what motivates your company, but here’s what drives us. The simple belief that security does not exist to serve itself; it protects innocence. The literal translation of the Japanese word “Samurai” is servant to nobility. This is key. What does protecting the trustful innocence of a business look like? Humility, learning, inconvenience, hardening, loving AI, testing, patience, auditing, documenting, tearing down insecure business practices, hating AI, apologizing, begging for budget, teaching, leaving old IT paradigms behind, embracing resistance, maturing SIEMs and networks and people to fight Cyber criminals and the apex predators of today and tomorrow. In short, charging full-force into the battlefields where security needs to be fought. And this is not without reward. In those fleeting moments of calm at the front lines, we glance back and see HR, Finance, IT, and others… safe. Business as it should be, unaware of us. Trustful innocence, and our joy.

Welcome to Cyber Samurai