The Only 7 in 1 Security Solution SMB Needs

Welcome to The Did You Know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders, executives and experts at amazing technology companies that can help your business save a lot of time, money and grow faster. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business and give you a competitive advantage----https://www.varisource.com

Welcome to the did you know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money and grow. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.4s Hello, everyone. This is Victor with varisource. Welcome to another episode of the did you know podcast. Today I'm excited to have Dor Eisner, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Guards. And Guards is a cost effective all in one cybersecurity solution designed for it pros and SMB. Welcome to the show,

Dor. Thank you, Victor. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Yeah, no worries. 1.3s We were just chatting earlier. You're a world traveler, you travel a lot and love to hear all about that. But for the audience that may not know you too much or garage, can you give us a little background and found a story about yourself and how did you kind of get here? Sure. So I started my journey about 20 years ago in the cybersecurity space. I started the Israeli Intelligence force. The 8200 unit. It's a special unit that actually started about 25 years ago. And I was there for about five years when back in the time, no one really talked about cybersecurity. And cybersecurity 20 years ago was not a big thing, but for us, for the Israeli intelligence, it was a big thing. And the foundation of my background are more like technical, working for governments and stuff. In the last decade, I moved to the startup world. I was involved in three startups in the cybersecurity space. The last one, a company that developed a dark web intelligence platform, was acquired by Rapid Seven last year. It was a deal of $350,000,000. And after a few weeks after the acquisition, we decided to start and to build Guards with a mission to democratize cybersecurity for very small businesses. We saw this market shifting, especially 1.5s from the previous adventure. When we monitor the dark web. Victor, we saw 1s a trend of the bad guys. They started to create attack as a service tools. And those tools, they created a new market for cybercriminals because, like, three, four, five years ago, 1.3s

you need a lot of expertise to create and to generate or to execute a cyberattack. Nowadays, in the last year or so, you can just go to the Dark Web, find a form for attack as a service, and you can get like, phishing to as a service, ransomware to as a service, fraud tool as a service, you name it. And you can just pray and pray. And this trend, this shift in the market, created a new 1.3s scale of attacks against small businesses because they are more vulnerable than the enterprise solutions that are out there. 1.1s

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And we've seen, obviously, a lot of companies try to do multiple things, but when you guys say you're all in one, it's truly amazing, because you guys have email, web browsing, cloud, apps, awareness, identity, all in one platform, again at an affordable price, which we'll come back to that. But why did you take this approach of having six or seven different areas of coverage? Take kind of this holistic approach? 1.3s

Yeah, that's great. When we started to analyze about a year ago what is going to be the direction of protecting small businesses, we started to monitor what are the top attack vectors or what are the top attack as a service tools that are out there in the market. And we started to build the technology stack around how we can protect small businesses at scale and how we can do it in a cost effective and what the differentiator of Guard to the market 1.6s and together with the platform that can provide the security and also the insurance coverage. The components that are supporting the security are the components that are requested by the underwriters, by the carriers. To provide cyber insurance. So the technology that we are developing, the all in one is actually the enablement and the qualification to get the best insurance coverage and that's by guards that we are streamlining the security 1s and the insurance. And by the way, the security components, obviously part of them we are developing ourselves, part of them we are OEM with security vendors, leading security engines out there. But overall, the guard experience is an all in one approach for securing into your business in a subscription mode. 1.4s

Yeah, we're definitely going to come back and talk more about this integration. Obviously one of the next questions we want to ask you, and we're here to ask you tough questions for the audience, for the business owners. Right. Obviously, when you're able to provide more solution, more value, more areas of coverage under one affordable price, that's amazing in any category. But I think a lot of people might look at that and say, well, you're trying to be good at everything, but you might not be the best at one of those categories. It could be email, could be maybe there's another email tool, security tool that's much better. Focus on that. What would you say to companies who might think about that or might have concerns about the fact that it may not be the best solution for each of these areas? Or do you feel like SMB may not be concerned about that? What's your thought?

Yeah, in the end of the day, it's not about the best point solution, it's about how I can protect my business from the top attack vectors and how I can do it holistically. And 1.3s even if you go and invest in the best endpoint protection like solution from an enterprise grade solution, first of all, you will pay a lot of money. Then you will have only point solution against one attack vector. So in the end of the day, we believe our approach is providing you good enough security that will cover the top attack vectors into one single solution that can actually monitor your risk from the external perspective and the internal network and can analyze the risk over time and remediate threats in Greece. So it's about the detection, prevention and remediation that would create guards, the one solution that tailored and affordable for small businesses. And we believe that our technology stack is definitely leading with all the engines and the integration that we have in the back end. 1.9s

Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. Again, even if you buy the best solution or you think is the best, there are still limitations on these point solution and you end up buying five or six different point solutions that doesn't talk to each other. And I think that's where a lot of companies struggle, right? Especially small businesses. So you mentioned something really unique, which is insurance. As a security company, obviously it does impact insurance because those two things go hand in hand. However, we haven't really seen any security companies either get involved in or even be a part of the insurance process. 1.6s And so what made you in the beginning thought about either including or first of all, how does the insurance work? Are you guys providing insurance or are you guys just helping them? How do you guys impact on the insurance side for SMB? Question number one, number two is what made you want to include this offering when it's really theoretically two different businesses even though it impacts

each other? Yeah, definitely. First of all, we've partnered with a carrier that is providing the insurance for our customers. So we are not doing the underwriting itself and it's not in our paper, but it's definitely our policy based on our detection response capabilities in the platform. So once you get the Guard solution and once you're secured by Guard, you can get a better pricing and better coverage from the carrier that we are working with than other carriers in the market. So compared to other carriers in the market, the coverage and the price will be better with Guard. And we decided to go on this motion because we believe that for small businesses, it's about cybersecurity peace of mind. And cybersecurity peace of mind is the technology and it's also the coverage. You need to know that if you have only the insurance coverage, it's not good enough. Because in the end of the day, if something bad happens, 1.2s you will get the money, maybe the claim, but then you will need to fix it for a few days or a few weeks or even sometimes you can fix it. Reputation, data ransomware and stuff. 1.2s So we believe in the combination of being secured but also being insured if something bad happened. And we believe in our technology and also the carrier that the partner with God believe in our technology that can improve the loss ratio of newspaper. So in the end of the day, it's good for everyone. 1.8s

Yeah, I think that is super smart. I mean, I think it's just a vision that you have that I always say customer doesn't need more data, they need answers. And I think that this is a great way for you to do that is you thought about what you would want as a business owner, as a small business owner and what you would need. All the entire supply chain of it is not just one thing. So I think yeah, that's awesome. I'm sure they can get better discounts on their cyber insurance because it's already been pre vetted. Also for the underwriter, it's less risk because they already know that your system is going to protect them and protect those risks. For sure. It's a win win situation, right?

Yeah, spot on. Definitely.

Yeah. So first of all, we mentioned a couple of times all of the amazing value and services you guys provide, yet at such an affordable price. And I think that is such a it's a, it's a game changer in itself. How were you able to include so many solutions? Because you also have OEMs, you partner with, they have cost, you have costs and to put it all together plus the insurance and everything, how were you able to do it at such an affordable price? Yeah, so first of all, we are developing a very unique technology that is based on the existing technologies that are out there. Like for example, if you are integrating with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 or even your devices running Microsoft Defender and other tools that are out there. So first of all, our platform leveraging all the products that the customer is already using and making sure that the security posture of those solutions are the best, is the best. And then we are able to detect and analyze any risk coming from the external exposure of the business and monitoring the digital footprint of the business. So we build a lot of technologies that can work at scale and therefore we are able to reduce the price massively. And the

OEMs that we are using for engines like antivirus engines and antimalware engines, we are just buying them at scale. So it's a different approach of getting to a vendor, to a third party vendor and asking him for 100 users. But we are doing it at scale and we are supporting hundreds of customers every month, new customers and we are new in the market. So we just have hundreds of customers right now. But the vision is to secure hundreds of thousands of businesses in the US 1s in the next years to come. 1.4s

Yeah, no, especially in this economy. And also SMB, people feel like buying It or even security is just like they just keep spending and spending and spending. It's always a new solution they need or they just pay one cost effective price and get six or seven different solutions in one. I mean, that's a no brainer I think, as a buyer, right, so, but if you look at SMB, some companies don't even have It people, right, or some maybe only have one. So can you kind of give us a couple of examples of how do you help companies, how do you guys work with companies who may not have It, but want obviously security? And then what about if they do have an It person? How do you complement and help that It admin?

It's a good question. So, the Guard solution, the technology stack is built for It professionals. So you don't need to be a security expert to work with God, but you need to have some It knowledge in order to onboard and to help the platform remediate threats for you. So we have actually two business models and two different dashboards. We have a dashboard and a business model for internal It, like a small It team, even one man show It team for small business that can onboard, self serve to the platform and get all the security stack plus the detection prevention remediation in an automated fashion to the Guard website. Guard, you can go to the website as an It manager and get the product immediately. We are providing, by the way, 14 days free trial for the product. And then you can choose if you want to pay for subscription, for a monthly subscription or for an annual subscription. Obviously, the price change accordingly for companies that are using some kind of external It or outsource their It. We have built the same platform, the same technology, but with a different dashboard as a multitenancy dashboard for It consultant like MSPs that are supporting the small businesses. And we are working with a selected group of MSPs that are providing our services and we are onboarding new MSPs every day. So the MSPs that are working with Guards, they are able to provide the small business owners the Guard solution at the same price, at the same service, at the same level that they can get it directly. 2.2s

Yeah. So that sounds great that you're actually helping internal it and external it. So you mentioned obviously last couple of years you've seen kind of this research and shift in risk for SMBs. If you look forward, let's say in the next one year to three years, you know, just from and being a security expert for so long, what do you think are some of the new challenges that SMBs are going to face and where do you think kind of that security is going to be headed? Meaning 1.1s are there new categories that you guys are thinking about adding that you feel like are going to be important in the stack?

Yeah, for sure. Based on a lot of market research and based on our experience, the cyber crisis in the small business market is just started, just getting started. 1.4s What the economy saw 1.4s in the last decade about cybersecurity for Enterprise is going to be the same in the next decade to come as a cybersecurity for small businesses. Because, as we mentioned in the beginning, the threat actors. And the bad guys in the Dark Web day, they are leveraging their tools to scale the cybercrime, and therefore, we are going to see a tremendous amount of attacks targeting small businesses. And we are there and we want to help small businesses to get their business secured and to focus on what matters running their business and sleep good at night. So in terms of the product roadmap and the product capabilities, we believe that a lot of functionality is going to be around the cloud. So we are going to add in the foreseeable future a lot of functionality and capabilities around SaaS applications and detecting the shadow It of the world, like any kind of SaaS application that users or employees are using as part of their business, email sharing data, collaborating with external resources, et cetera. That's going to be a huge risk for small businesses in the future. And our platform is going to support all the data leak prevention and all the shadow It 2.1s security with you in the next few weeks. 1.5s

Oh, wow, a few weeks. I mean, SaaS discovery, SaaS security, that is a hot space for sure. And so when you guys have that, it's going to be amazing. And we're excited to partner with you guys. 2.1s The last couple of months, as you know, AI has just taken over the world, right? In a sense of virality, where it used to be a very technology thing, but then, now people were thinking about in ten years AI is going to take over. It's like three months later, AI has taken over in the sense of it's everybody's mind, everybody's implementing Chat GPT. Just the view of AI has changed, even though from a technology perspective, a lot of people have. Integrating AI into security and everything already right. But love to get your thought as a founder, as a security expert, where do you see AI play a role? Maybe in what you guys do, but also maybe for security 1.4s industry in general, you think?

I think that AI is the biggest change 1.5s for the future of security and that's happening now. As you mentioned, we are thinking about implementing AI in our remediation plan. Still work in progress, still 1.6s in the oven, let's say. But in the next few years, AI is going to be a big part of the security operation for most of the companies and also for guards, until, I believe, as an industry expert, for many years, until the last year. So AI was a buzzword and now it became like a reality because the open source and the availability of AI is becoming more accessible for technologies to implement. So we are there, we are working on it as we speak. And let's see how the market is developing in this area. 1.6s

Yeah, it's super exciting, for sure. It's giving a lot of people a lot of incredible opportunities. So the last question we always have for our guests here as we wrap up is you've seen a lot, you've done a lot, had a lot of success. If you have to give one personal and or business advice to anybody that you're just passionate about or something you believed in strongly, what do you think that would be dory 2.5s

walking in security for more than 20 years? We believe that this market is evolving so fast 1s and we want to be part of this involvement, especially for protecting small businesses and to build a safer digital world for small businesses and just to create a better world. Our passion here, by the way, our development and Rnd team is located in Israel and our headquarters is located in Dallas. So we believe that together we can build a safer digital world for those businesses. And I'm passionate about it. That's what we are eating for morning and before sleep.

Yeah, no, I definitely feel the passion, and I love working with your team. We're excited to partner with you. So, no, I really appreciate your time today and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you very much. Victor, 1.3s that was an amazing episode of the digital podcast with Varisource. Hope you enjoyed it and got some great insights from it. Make sure you follow us on social media for the next episode. And if you want to get the best deals from the guest today, make sure to send us a message at sales@varisource.com.

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