UPDATED 15:39 EDT / MAY 26 2020

SECURITY

How Polyverse is fighting cyberattacks before they happen

What do a philosopher and an early computer hacker have in common? At startup Polyverse Corp., they work together to solve cybersecurity problems. With a pragmatic vision, the company seeks to design solutions to prevent cyberattacks before they happen.

“I got my undergraduate degree in philosophy, and from there, kind of just like, what am I going to do with a philosophy degree?” said Blue Gaston (pictured, right), software engineer at Polyverse. “And it just weirdly was like a natural transition. I was like, oh, computer science — and [it is] kind of the logical, like the technical version of philosophy.”

Since joining Polyverse as an intern, Gaston has been supported by Mark Zbikowski (left), who is her stepfather, a former architect at Microsoft where he was employee number 55 and a computer hacker. Zbikowski recently joined Polyverse as a technical consultant.

“My role is … to take a look at what Polyverse is doing at present, try to figure out where we need to go, try to figure out what the next set of challenges are, use our broad experience and knowledge of the computing milieu, and try to figure out what are the tough issues we need to face,” Zbikowski explained.

Gaston and Zbikowski spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, for a digital CUBE Conversation. They discussed their career paths, the changing definition of hacking over time and Polyverse solutions against cyberattacks.

Increasing complexity and cost for attackers

Polyverse develops cybersecurity technology that builds diversity and uniqueness across multiple system dimensions, increasing the complexity and cost for attackers and stopping attacks before they start. Mitigating security issues involves several layers that need to be addressed, according to Zbikowski.

“You need to secure your passwords before you can do anything else,” he said. “You need to make sure that there’s a firewall in your system before … you even start thinking about doing things, like what’s going on with what we’re doing at Polyverse. There is a wide range of tools that people need, that people use, that people spend money on today. Polyverse has got a very unique perspective on how to go and extend this.”

Being active, rather than just reactive and responsive, is a good way to approach the environment, according to Gaston. “We’re trying to create new solutions that, instead of just being compliant and checking the boxes … will stop attacks from actually working,” she pointed out.

One of the challenges of cybersecurity is the frequent evolution of attacks. Zbikowski started in the computer world when he was at school in Detroit and had access to an academic operating system called MTS, from Wayne State University. From that time to now, a lot has changed.

“Hacking at the time was all about trying to understand and learn stuff that was arcane and hidden and mysterious,” he said. “[Now] it’s kind of an arms race — everything that the white hats will throw up, the black hats will eventually attack to some degree. Social engineering is sort of the ultimate way that people have been getting around software protections.”

To avoid future attacks, cybersecurity companies should look ahead. And that is exactly what Zbikowski helps Polyverse to do.

“I’m one of a small collection of people who have pretty wide-ranging expertise across operating systems, networks, compilers, languages, development tools, all of that,” he said. “We’re not like researchers; we’re much more into the product planning side of things, but product planning in … a visionary sense.”

Here’s the complete video interview, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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