DATA SECURITY,PLATFORM SECURITY,SOFTWARE SECURITY
Zapata Computing | December 06, 2022
Zapata Computing, the leading enterprise quantum software company, today announced that the company has earned two new patents for post-quantum cybersecurity techniques. The new patents are for its Variational Quantum Factoring (VQF) and Quantum-Assisted Defense Against Adversarial AI (QDAI) algorithms.
With the addition of these patents, Zapata now owns one of the world’s largest quantum computing software patent portfolios. The company’s growing portfolio includes a diverse range of proprietary quantum algorithms, machine learning, optimization and hardware methods.
VQF and QDAI In the Age of Post-Quantum Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence
As the narrative regarding post-quantum cybersecurity continues to gain momentum across the security, intelligence and technology landscapes, VQF and QDAI underpin Zapata’s post-quantum cybersecurity threat intelligence solutions for its customers.
VQF is a heuristic algorithm for cryptanalysis that can run on near-term quantum devices, quantum-inspired data structures, and other special purpose classical hardware. The hybrid quantum-classical algorithm was developed by Zapata’s technical experts and is a technique that demonstrates that an adversary can already start attempting to compromise existing encryption schemes using heuristic algorithms. A heuristic algorithm is designed to solve a problem faster than traditional methods by sacrificing accuracy or completeness for speed. This means that VQF is effective at identifying specific instances of the encryption vulnerability – helping enterprises shore up defenses in advance of an attack.
“VQF introduces a new category of decryption possibilities that could arrive a lot sooner than the market expects. “We don’t need to wait for a fully fault-tolerant computer that can run Shor’s algorithm to see the threat. It’s not a sudden ‘one-day’ jump. VQF demonstrates that an adversary can try to compromise existing encryption schemes using heuristic algorithms that don’t have a mathematically provable guarantee they will compromise all instances. Using Shor’s algorithm, factoring a 2048-bit RSA number requires a quantum computer with millions of physical qubits running for hours. We estimate that VQF can factor a 2048-bit RSA number with approximately several thousand NISQ qubits in around the same amount of time.”
Yudong Cao, CTO and co-founder of Zapata Computing
QDAI is the first hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for defense against adversarial attacks. Machine learning (ML) classification models are prone to adversarial attacks. These attacks add a very small -- but carefully chosen -- variance to data that confuses the classifier, rendering results to be incorrect. Quantum computers provide a new method of attack against ML models that possess a uniquely quantum noise meant to confuse the model. QDAI trains ML models to be immune to these types of adversarial AI attacks.
“Quantum computers have a high potential to exploit potential vulnerabilities of neural networks,” added Cao. “As threats accumulate and adversarial AI models get stronger, we must leverage the power of quantum and classical resources to successfully defend against these attacks. That’s exactly the reason we developed QDAI. As quantum computers grow, we may be able to switch to a fully quantum classifier, but in the meantime, there is potential for significant gains with the quantum-classical hybrid approach like QDAI.”
“Zapata is consistently pushing the innovation envelope, developing new proprietary methods and technology that can benefit our customers and the ecosystem,” said Christopher Savoie, CEO of Zapata Computing. “These patents represent a growing focus and concern regarding the threat that quantum computers present to national security and global enterprises. We developed VQF and QDAI as proactive threat intelligence techniques in order to develop countermeasures so our enterprise and government customers can assess their systems and make them more robust against an attack. We anticipate that more vulnerabilities will emerge as quantum and AI technology mature, and we’ll continue to research and identify new threats down the road to try to stay a step ahead.”
About Zapata Computing
Zapata Computing, Inc. is a leading enterprise quantum software company. The Company’s Orquestra® platform supports the research, development, and deployment of quantum-ready applications® for enterprises’ most computationally complex problems. Zapata has pioneered new methods in ML, optimization, and simulation to maximize value from near-term quantum devices, and works closely with ecosystem hardware providers such as Amazon, D-Wave, Google, NVIDIA, Quantinuum, IBM, IonQ and Rigetti. Zapata was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
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DATA SECURITY,PLATFORM SECURITY,SOFTWARE SECURITY
Balbix | December 19, 2022
Balbix, the leader in cybersecurity posture automation, announced its support for Microsoft Azure today. With these new capabilities, Balbix now supports the three top cloud service providers – Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform – as well as traditional environments. Balbix also announced enhanced platform support for the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure services, Windows, Microsoft Store apps and Azure Active Directory single sign-on.
McKinsey estimates that by 2025, organizations aspire to have 60 percent of their IT environments in the cloud. Yet, according to the Cybersecurity Insiders State of Security Posture Report, 62 percent of organizations lack confidence in their security posture. These findings highlight the growing need for effective cloud security solutions.
Balbix's support for Azure cloud services includes Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Service Bus Messaging, Azure Key Vault, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure SQL Database, Azure AKS Deployments, and Azure Functions. A new API-based Balbix Connector for Microsoft Azure and optional sensors for virtual machines capture data from Azure for analysis by the Balbix brain.
Cybersecurity teams can now:
Get comprehensive, real-time visibility of Azure assets, categorized into compute, storage, network, containers, database, security, and identity.
Capture system details for virtual machines, including network, storage, open ports, users, software bill of materials (SBOM) and security controls.
Combine Azure cloud data with data from other tools to map over 400 cybersecurity, IT and business attributes to assets.
Obtain visibility into misconfigurations – the most commonly exploited attack vector in cloud-hosted environments.
Leverage (optional) Balbix host sensors to gain visibility into additional types of vulnerabilities, such as unpatched software vulnerabilities, weak credentials, and trust issues.
Unified Visibility for Multi-Cloud Environments
Balbix's new support for Azure means that organizations now have access to an integrated Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) solution that works across the top three cloud providers, traditional data center and office environments, and mobile employee devices. Cybersecurity practitioners get a single tool to automatically combine data from disparate solutions into a unified view of their assets.
Balbix provides more than just visibility. Unlike other solutions, Balbix combines CAASM with Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) and Cyber Risk Qualification (CRQ) capabilities. This tight integration enables maximally automated identification, prioritization and mitigation of security issues. Gaps in security controls are identified and rectified quickly. CISOs and their teams can calculate cyber risk for the entire enterprise, across cloud and non-cloud assets, in dollars, and make cybersecurity decisions, informed by real-time data and insights.
"Multi-cloud deployments have added additional complexity for cybersecurity practitioners. These challenges include fragmented visibility across cloud and non-cloud environments and an inability to prioritize vulnerabilities enterprise-wide," said Ed Amoroso, Founder and CEO of research and advisory firm TAG Cyber. "With support for Microsoft Azure, Balbix now helps users address these challenges across the top three cloud providers."
Broad Support for the Microsoft Ecosystem
Balbix's support for Microsoft Azure also adds to its broader support for the Microsoft ecosystem. These capabilities include security posture automation for assets running Windows and other Microsoft software, and third-party software products running on those assets. For Windows OS, Balbix provides a consolidated view of patch status and compliance across all assets with recommended fixes based on patch precedence.
"I'm very excited to announce our support for Microsoft Azure cloud services. Organizations can manage their cyber risk for Microsoft Azure, multi-cloud and hybrid environments using a single integrated and maximally automated paradigm. "With this software release, we've also enhanced our support for Windows to help Microsoft customers better protect their infrastructure."
Gaurav Banga, Founder and CEO of Balbix
In addition, Balbix now allows security teams to manage the security posture of applications downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Balbix is also announcing a new integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory single sign-on.
About Balbix
Balbix enables businesses to reduce cyber risk by quickly identifying and mitigating their riskiest cybersecurity issues. Our SaaS platform, the Balbix Security Cloud™, ingests data from businesses' security and IT tools so they can understand every aspect of their cybersecurity posture, build a unified cyber risk model and obtain actionable insights for risk reduction. With Balbix, businesses can automate their cloud and on-premise asset inventory, conduct continuous risk-based vulnerability management and quantify cyber risk in dollars. Executives and operational teams can make cybersecurity decisions based on data, not opinions.
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DATA SECURITY,PLATFORM SECURITY,SOFTWARE SECURITY
Cymulate | December 07, 2022
Cymulate, the market leader in Threat Exposure Assessment and Cybersecurity Controls Validation, today announced a new technology integration with Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, which reduces risk related to cyber threats. In addition to joining the Trend Micro Vision One ecosystem partner program, the company has completed the technology integration of its cybersecurity risk validation and exposure management solution with the Trend Micro Vision One XDR platform. The collaboration will correlate simulated attacks with ongoing events and alerts, enhancing the security control environment and management against malicious behavior and real and simulated malware.
Today's malicious actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their execution of attacks. As a result, organizations must have measures in place to protect their network and ensure they are constantly monitoring their environment for new threats.
Together, the integrated Cymulate and Trend Micro Vision One XDR solution provides comprehensive protection against cyber threats and strengthens an organization's security posture with the following benefits:
Automated and continuous security validation across the entire attack kill-chain
Ongoing simulation that operationalizes the MITRE ATT&CK framework
Creating auto remediation playbooks to new threats and attack vectors
Configuration of Trend Micro's XDR policies to Cymulate's actionable remediation guidance
"Cyberattacks are not showing any signs of slowing down and need a united front from security providers to combat them. "We are delighted to be partnering with Trend Micro so that businesses can better understand any weaknesses in their security posture and optimize their existing security infrastructure to better protect their organizations."
Carolyn Crandall, chief security advocate at Cymulate
"Security validation is an essential step for organizations to take towards cyber resilience," said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at Trend Micro. "Integrating our solutions with Cymulate is an exciting milestone for us. This new offering will significantly strengthen the risk assessment capability and provide enhanced seamless protection for mission-critical environments through ongoing simulated attacks deployed alongside events and alerts coming from Trend Micro."
Cymulate's platform is recognized for its ability to continuously test a business's security posture against immediate threats and to validate whether security controls are functioning properly to stop in-network activities tied to execution methods, OS manipulation, data manipulation, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and other actions that inform on how bad the incursion or breach might be. The breadth and depth of this platform have earned it recognition as the gold standard for continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) programs, an emerging security program that was coined by Gartner, Inc.
About Cymulate
Cymulate's continuous risk validation and exposure management platform provides security professionals with the ability to continuously challenge, validate and optimize their on-premises and cloud cyber-security posture with visualization end-to-end across the MITRE ATT&CK® framework. The platform provides automated, expert and threat intelligence led risk assessments that are simple to deploy and use for organizations of all cybersecurity maturity levels. It also provides an open framework to create and automate red and purple teaming by generating penetration scenarios and advanced attack campaigns tailored to their unique environments and security policies.
About Trend Micro
Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world.
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