Cappuccino Chat - Episode2 - Huntress Labs

welcome to cappuccino chat today I am talking with Kyle one of the cofounders of hunters labs so they're the makers of our persistent threat detector that we offer in our security stack so Kyle can you tell us a little bit about your background and how hunters came to be so Matt I know you know but for your partners I spent eleven years doing offensive cyber security at NSA so a lot of people don't realize what that means and literally my job was breaking into networks gathering intelligence data or maybe like hunting after counter terrorists and at the end of the day was to be able to reduce the risk our nation faces from gathering data on that intelligence okay so while you were doing this I know we just got done through with one of your sessions you know why did you get out of that and do this and you're very passionate about the security space which is great but so what what did you see in the marketplace that you knew that there was a need for a product like hunters so that's probably the biggest question that people ask me as well at the end of the day they always say why do you leave something fun and sexy like hacking and the reality was that for you do it for a very long time I imagine it's it's probably not something even specific to cybersecurity if you did something like maybe plastic surgery you might ask yourself should I go in like maybe do something that complements more than people's aesthetics maybe I should do something to help people's health I had the same type of feeling of I was always breaking things but was never going back and like giving back so 11 12 years is about the point I realized like I could use my offensive skills in support of small medium-sized businesses who usually get overlooked by the major vendors and they do so one thing I get asked when I'm talking to my clients is so how is this different than antivirus do I need this in conjunction with or can we get rid of antivirus and just go with this so what would you say to somebody that would ask you that kind of question is antivirus for like the last 20 years and maybe the simplest way you know to share it with your clients is its whole job is is a program going to do something malicious that's really distilling it down to the basics and unfortunately you have to make that decision really quick think about it if you decided to make that decision too late the effect already happens the computer gets maybe encrypted and the biggest problem is maybe they don't get encrypted and somebody stays in your network that's antivirus is it going to do something bad we had hunter s and if you think about my job do an offensive cyber security I was there to be there for a long time living in your network and more than any one computer getting ransomed or maybe somebody logging your keystrokes I was more worried about what if somebody stays inside a computer network for months or weeks years and that's that's way more risky to your business your productivity your uptime opens you up for lawsuits data theft so our whole goal was antivirus is still there it's an important thing to stop and do prevention mmm but if something slipped fast prevention because there's no such thing as perfect prevention no if something slips PI how do you discover it quick and get it the heck out of the network or get it off the computer before the situation like escalates and so that was it that was the thing that motivated me and my team no good so one last thing just as a little bonus thing so if you were to give somebody a small business maybe just starting out or a small business that's been around for a while what's like a security tip you would give them to use like the biggest bang for their buck kind of security tip what would you say to them all right my number one is usually in relation to you know when it comes to security to team sport and a lot of us think that we're the greatest at any one single thing being able to find somebody to they can actually identify your gaps if you were an accountant you'd look to somebody that specializes and maybe foreign taxes and you'd find that team concept that person that could be augment your gaps for us our biggest thing is making sure you find somebody with that knowledge to find your gaps you guys are kind of in a lucky position that you're usually that person complimenting but even in your circumstances of hey here's a gap somebody could get past the antivirus the same way that we've partnered together to find those gaps so I think the biggest suggestion is just remember like security is a team sport yeah I tell a lot of my clients lot of times if you give me a million dollars today and I made you completely secure today tomorrow we got to start back because it's completely changing the game is gonna restart that's probably a thousand percent sure yes so this is called cappuccino chat so we normally talk about coffee and good coffee now we're at a convention filming this in a empty room that we hijacked hopefully we don't get kicked out by security but so good coffee is not on the menu we're here at a convention you're drinking tea due to your voice and I appreciate you doing this for us are you a coffee drinker I didn't even ask before we start of this coffee I do but but usually I know a lot of folks are all about hey I need my coffee to get me up in the morning I've actually find my biggest slump is like after a meal at lunch and I try to like maintain a copy level what about two o'clock that's that's kind of what keeps me my peak from 2:00 to 5:00 so what's your favorite coffee oh I drink mostly my stuff just good old-fashioned black but obviously I'm a little bit of a snob okay so I digitally like my copies that maybe have a little bit more the fruity flavor to it maybe something I think there's some of the Columbian ones that you know a little darker roast okay so so yeah I would say usually a dark black rice that keeps things you maybe interesting without adding a whole lot of sugar or anything to it nice nice alright well that's it for this episode of cappuccino chat see you guys next time you