Fortscale, based in Tel Aviv, was started by Idan Tendler and Dr. Yona Hollander. They have raised $5M in funding, and are adding staff at a rapid pace. Fortscale is a new type of cyber security company, that incorporates artificial intelligence into its platform. The security products of yesterday are static in nature, focused on prevention, and reaction.Â
Fortscale has developed a robust security analytics platform that makes life easier for the security analyst and security operations. The platform is called Fortscale 1.0, and it’s a complimentary product to big data repositories and SIEM’s, like Splunk and ArcSight. One of the benefits of Fortscale 1.0 is the ease of use. There’s no need for analyst to create rules manually, in order to detect anomalies.
The platform has baked-in intelligence, that uses an algorithm to automatically detect suspicious behavior, without human intervention. Today, one of the problems of using big data repositories with a SIEM is that rules need to be created manually, consuming scarce resources. Fortscale solves that problem. In addition, it provides valuable intelligence to security analyst that is visualized in dashboards and reports.
Fortscale Platform
The main function of the Fortscale is to collect big volumes of log data, from Active Directory, logins, SSH, DNS, VPN, proxy, FW, without the need to use pre-defined signatures. The Fortscale learns its surroundings, including the behavior of users, and builds a dynamic knowledge base of the evolving network, in order to help the security analyst detect anomalies, and provide intelligence to mitigate the issue in near real time.
One of the characteristics of SIEMs is it’s inability to process large amounts of log data. Current SIEMS are not built for massive parallel processing. The Fortscale platform is built for such an occasion, processing huge volumes of log data on it’s Hadoop cluster technology.
In addition, the platform has built-in machine algorithms that analyze hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes of data within a short time frame. Once the processing and analysis of data is completed, the dynamic engine generates a score for each risk, prioritizing and highlighting the most critical risk, that is presented in dashboards.
Conclusion
Today’s cyber criminal is a skilled tactician, mathematician, who is very patient, and whose sole purpose is to find a hole in the weakest link. Once they find the weak link, they will penetrate the network, and live in harmony, under a shroud of secrecy, waiting for the right time to strike. The Fortscale platform disrupts the cyber criminal in their tracks, and helps companies protect their most valuable commodity, intellectual property.
The ultimate goal of today’s security product is to do it’s job, and to make life easier for security operations. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to operate any security platform, as their is a shortage in the security workforce. If the product is easy to use, where even junior level security analyst can operate it, that in itself is a big selling point. Fortscale meets that requirement dead on. This product will do well in the market place, and my prediction is that they will get acquired in the process by the likes of Splunk, HP or RSA. Cool Startup: Fortscale