VentureBeat Q&A: How Airgap CEO Ritesh Agrawal created an innovative cybersecurity startup

VentureBeat sat down (just about) final week with Ritesh Agrawal, CEO and cofounder of Airgap Networks, to achieve insights into how he and his group are creating some of the modern startups within the cybersecurity trade.

Agrawal leads a group of specialists who’ve constructed profitable infrastructure merchandise for the service, industrial and enterprise sectors. He has over 20 years of expertise in networking, safety and cloud options. Beneath Agrawal’s management Airgap Networks has achieved a number of milestones, together with successful three prestigious International InfoSec Awards on the RSA Convention in 2023.

The next is an edited excerpt from VentureBeat’s interview with Ritesh Agrawal: 

VentureBeat: Are you able to inform us about your background and the way you bought concerned within the cybersecurity trade?  

Ritesh Agrawal: I’ve a background main the Juniper Community Safety enterprise, the place I primarily centered on Telcos and huge enterprises. I acknowledged the trade was shedding the cybersecurity battle, with safety infrastructure spend growing every year, but breaches and damages persevering with to rise. Realizing the necessity for a extra sustainable answer, I noticed a possibility to use VC-led innovation to the trade.

And that at all times begins with a transformational structure, not only a new function set. We noticed the effectiveness of the cell/telco structure in stopping malware from spreading chilly even when a tool is contaminated and at a fraction of the price of enterprise choices. The title “Airgap” comes from our ambition to supply this identical stage of excellent isolation, safety and cost-effectiveness for all enterprises throughout IT and OT.

VB: As CEO of Airgap, what insights have you ever discovered in regards to the cybersecurity trade? 

Agrawal: First, the menace panorama is extremely dynamic, so solely the nimblest organizations will adapt and thrive. That is why you see so many profitable startups in cybersecurity — it’s laborious for bigger organizations to innovate as quick as attackers can, and clients can’t afford to fall behind.

For instance, Airgap has six vital patents with extra [pending] approval, and we simply gained three main innovation awards at RSAC, as our clients depend on us to maintain them forward of modifications within the menace panorama.

Second, to goal excessive. It is a busy house with a variety of competing options, so incremental innovation and have sharpening aren’t going to displace any incumbents. I’ve at all times believed that as a startup you must ship a wholly new structure, not only a product, otherwise you shouldn’t launch.

Lastly, to attempt to internalize that each community safety group is absolutely stretched on time and finances proper now. They want fast, straightforward wins that don’t require new expertise. Simplification and fast time-to-value is a enterprise gamechanger. Don’t automate complicated safety processes — remove them with a greater structure. At Airgap, for instance, we didn’t merely make conventional community segmentation plumbing “simpler,” it’s simply gone.

VB: How do you see the menace panorama evolving over the subsequent a number of years?

Agrawal: Assaults are about to change into much more refined. For instance, social engineering assaults utilizing a mix of AI and the wealth of on-line details about us and our employers will punish networks that lack robust authentication and identification controls.

State actors and crime-as-a-service are seemingly going to play a bigger position, and meaning extra assaults that aren’t about ransomware however as a substitute trigger vital injury to core networks and belongings.

It’s half of a bigger development that I imagine alerts the top of perimeter-based safety considering, and in some ways the top of the growing old core community structure itself. And why clients comparable to Flex, Tillys and Kingston Applied sciences are actively adopting Airgap as their defensible structure for business-critical infrastructure.

VB: What ought to cybersecurity leaders do to get forward of this curve?  

Agrawal: First, acknowledge the necessity to prioritize defending business-critical networks, belongings and identities with a defensible community structure. Everybody has their very own distinctive “crown jewels.” They drive the enterprise and operational processes that should keep secured, even when breaches are occurring elsewhere within the community. And that’s Airgap.

Perimeter-based firewall structure isn’t sufficient, and I’m comfortable to debate any firewall vendor on this. Everyone seems to be spending extra and getting breached extra; that’s not what successful appears to be like like.

Second, aggressively drive belief and assault floor out of your community. Set up zero-trust segmentation between your business-critical infrastructure and your commonplace company IT community, in addition to for all gadgets inside shared networks, to ensure threats can’t unfold. And shut the hole between identification and endpoint safety with a devoted safe entry answer, as conventional VPN options don’t remove the legacy trusted connections that attackers know methods to breach.

And you’ll’t safe what you don’t learn about or can’t discover, so leverage network-centric asset discovery and intelligence like Airgap that’s designed for low latency and no community congestion.

And third, prioritize cybersecurity options that don’t require coronary heart surgical procedure to your working community. Apply this litmus check to each safety answer vendor: Inform me what modifications to my community, tech stack or infrastructure do I’ve to make? How a lot coaching do I would like? How lengthy will it take? Airgap deploys in hours, which is nice for time-to-value, however extra importantly it does this as a result of the contact to the working community is so gentle. Any answer that forces gear upgrades, community readdressing, ACL/NAC modifications or community downtime longer than a couple of microseconds ought to severely be averted.

VB: Why are OT networks a specific focus for attackers, and what particular precautions ought to OT community homeowners take?

Agrawal: OT networks weren’t initially designed for safety, however as a substitute for velocity and scale. OT networks have lengthy life cycles, are patched occasionally, and are considerably accessed by suppliers and distant help technicians. They typically have manner too many gadgets sharing the identical community phase. They’re stuffed with previous Home windows servers and headless gadgets, so all of the agent-based options designed for company IT networks simply plain don’t work. It’s like a safety Swiss cheese however for a lot of OT networks it may be extra holes than cheese.

The very very first thing I like to recommend for OT community homeowners is to create a devoted layer of visibility and management (we name it an Airgap) between your company IT community and your core/OT community. The Airgap Zero Belief Firewall, or ZTFW, prevents any threats from spreading from IT down into the core community, and vice versa, in order that security of operations will be maintained even when increased community layers are compromised.

Airgap ZTFW depends on three important capabilities to securing this devoted layer. The primary is agentless segmentation, as a result of previous Home windows servers and headless machines are frequent. The second is safe entry with full MFA (multifactor authentication) to your distant engineers and technicians, as a result of VPNs belief manner an excessive amount of. And the third is network-based asset intelligence with correct, real-time stock, as a result of OT networks are very dynamic.

VB: As soon as an enterprise totally segments and secures entry to its community, how does asset intelligence assist hold it secure?

Agrawal: Staying safe and in compliance on Day 2 and past is a serious drawback going through the trade. Earlier than Airgap started delivering same-day segmentation, enterprises would put in six months or extra of laborious work to stock and phase their community, solely to observe it begin to unravel once more the very subsequent day.

First, think about that actual networks are extremely dynamic. Whether or not the modifications are from acquisitions, new campuses, refreshes or simply cell gear shifting between flooring, most enterprises haven’t any clear concept what they’ve or the place it’s. The whole lot begins with real-time accuracy, and meaning the community. 

Prioritize options that leverage community context and community habits evaluation whereas making certain low latency and no community congestion, which have been key design objectives for Airgap with our ZTFW. Insist on having techniques that may present full visibility of each visitors move, together with lateral flows. Don’t accept techniques which have intensive packet inspection and polling, as they’ll simply congest overloaded networks.

VB: Airgap simply introduced ThreatGPT, a ChatGPT integration with the Airgap Zero Belief Firewall. What does this do for purchasers, and the place do you assume AI-assisted cybersecurity goes?

Agrawal: We’re tremendous enthusiastic about ThreatGPT. As a result of we set up full microsegmentation, we now have a wealth of details about the community, belongings and visitors historical past obtainable. As a result of ThreatGPT is totally built-in into the core of the ZTFW structure, you should use all obtainable information to coach the fashions, and I imagine we’re first to market with this.

ThreatGPT, based mostly on the GPT-3.5 structure, offers clients the data-mining intelligence of AI coupled with a simple, pure language interface. It’s fairly jaw-dropping; it’s going to ferret out dangers anyplace in your community by simply typing in easy questions.

For the long run, I see AI extra as driving human productiveness and never as an alternative choice to human intelligence. I’m happy Airgap is main the market right here — it’s a game-changer by way of danger administration.