We spoke to Brian Brammeier about OT Security and vulnerability scan solutions.
Dear Brian Brammeier, how would you describe Opscura in 3 quick-witted words?
OT Security 2.0 or “The Easy Button” for OT Security
Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us something about your background.
Cybersecurity veteran of 25+ years. In industries from medical devices, credit card security engineering, managed services, and email security. Former security engineer at Discover. Multiple time founder with 4 exits.
What distinguishes Opscura?
People don’t buy technology; they buy the outcome the tools produce. Too many cyber companies try to sell features, don’t understand their customers’ needs, and therefore lack the ability to connect with their customers. Most companies see cyber as a cost center. Opscura understands that companies and partners want a drop-in, no reconfiguration and no disruption solution to minimize their risk profile and solve their road map items. Not another tool.
How does Opscura help companies?
We help companies avoid or eliminate operational downtime.
That downtime could be from stopping a cyber incident like ransomware. It could also be by drastically cutting downtime required for security transformations like being able to segment a network without the need to re-iP or re-architect.
We also help customers avoid or eliminate capital expenditures for cyber-sunset assets like machining systems or medical scanners that are controlled by windows XP or similarly out-of-support devices.
Lastly, we help PE companies and their portfolio companies arbitrage purchase price multiples on both the buy and sell side. We teach our customers how to use our security platform as an offensive negotiation tool on the buy side as well as how to use it as defensive tool on the sell side.
What do you see differently from prevailing opinions in the field of cyber security?
Security is too complex, too slow, and too costly right now for OT. The cure is worse than the disease for many organizations, especially those with larger footprints and remote locations. We provide common sense, immediate outcomes.
How do you differentiate from traditional vulnerability scan solutions?
We are not a vulnerability scanning solution and we are not a visibility tool. We are a security tool or a security fabric that eliminates the traditional blunt force trauma normally inflicted on a plant, architecture, or process during a security or network lift and shift. These tools need fuel to run, and that fuel is network data and access. We make getting that data easier and faster without the need to reconfigure the network.
What’s next – what’s on your technical roadmap, what are your plans for 2024 and beyond?
Right now the market is asking for air gapped solutions but we foresee the need for cloud connected systems and management. Also, the ability to allow visibility tools offer direct protection recommendations to the network to a soc and we will be the layer to allow that protection to be frictionless.
If you could send an email to all CISOs to address a security issue, what would you choose?
According to McKinsey, there is only 1 to 5% market penetration for OT security. Why is this? Why are we not protecting our most critical assets? Why are we leaving our business continuity in the hands of hackers? In short, why are we opting out of fighting back?
Because, until Opscura, the cure was worse than the disease.
Companies are looking at millions of dollars in cost, years of technology mitigations, and debilitating downtime from security transformations. The biggest competition we have is inaction, and rightfully so, because the overall cost, including downtime, of your cyber roadmap is often greater than the incident itself.
We break that paradigm, together, by approaching security from an OT security 2.0 perspective. We can deliver on the majority of your cyber roadmap in weeks, if not hours, at a fraction of the cost and without your having to change any of your tech platforms or security partners. Let’s do it! Together. And today.
