Dear Mrs von Kölichen how would you describe Censys in 3 quick-witted words?
- Cyber intelligence
- Attack Surface Management
- Protector of the Universe
Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us something about your background.
At the helm of regional sales in the D-A-CH and Central European countries for Censys, my focus is on leveraging my extensive background in channel sales to drive sales growth and brand awareness of the Censys Cyber-Intelligence platform.
I have over 30 years of experience in the European IT market and have in my past worked for companies like Newbridge Networks, Mitel, Juniper, Planet, Fortinet and Cambium Networks.
What distinguishes Censys from other providers?
The foundation of the Censys Internet Intelligence platform is our data. Founded as ZMap, Censys offers its own map of the Internet, updated daily with comprehensive coverage for rapid threat detection. There are other internet scanners out there but the following technical points clearly define what we do differently to provide our customers with the most in-depth insights and up to date information:
● Censys provides an overview and external perspective of cybersecurity risks
● Censys has built and operates the largest multi-perspective scanning technology deployed at seven tier-1 ISPs across three continents
● Daily updated and self-generated internet map with own proprietary cyber security tools
● Comprehensive port coverage – all available 65K ports and cloud services are covered
● Automatic protocol detection
● Access to the world’s largest certificate database, historical data of all Internet-connected devices and CVE information
How does Censys help other companies?
In the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats, staying one step ahead of attackers is critical. Censys scanning technology provides organizations with an external view of their attack surface so they can better understand and manage their risks.
The Censys Internet Intelligence Platform is used by enterprise customers, operators of critical infrastructure and cyber intelligence organizations across the world for their cybercrime investigations and Censys is assisting them on a daily basis to make the internet and the world a safer place.
What do you see differently from prevailing opinions in the field of cyber security?
Censys differentiates itself in cyber security through its proactive approach. Instead of reactively combating threats, Censys continuously scans the entire internet to proactively identify security vulnerabilities at an early stage.
Most cyber security solutions focus on protecting your attack surface from the inside-out. We offer a completely different perspective, giving you a view of your attack surface from the outside-in, just like a hacker would see it.
What is a current top priority for Censys at the moment?
Our research team recently discovered a number of vulnerabilities among critical infrastructure providers in the US.
Hundreds of digital systems used to control water, oil, agriculture and other U.S. industries are vulnerable to outside interference via the open Internet.
Censys researchers found that more than 430 software controls for industrial machinery across the country were accessible online and more than half of them had no protection to authenticate who was using them.
Helping utilities, governments, telecoms and energy providers to protect their critical infrastructure is currently one of our top priorities.
What’s next – what’s on your technical roadmap, what are your plans for 2024 and beyond?
Well, I am of course not allowed to give you all of the details about our plans for the future, but Censys has a very clear vision of where we to go with our Internet Intelligence Platform and what we want to accomplish. We do something that no other company does and provide data that is critical to teams fighting again cyber threats.
I can tell you that we are very proud of our Rapid Response Research team and that we will continue to focus on building out this service. The team releases our analysis of new CVE’s within 24 hours of them coming out and this service is very valuable for our customers.
We are also working on improving the usability of our solution and plan to release a new user interface next year.
If you could send an email to all CISOs to address a security issue, what would you choose?
I would ask them if they have a complete overview of their attack surface including cloud resources and shadow-it. I would ask them if their SOC team members have the right tools to proactively monitor their attack surface and investigate vulnerabilities and incidents as they occur. I would ask them how much time their team is spending chasing after false positives and sifting through data to understand what is important and what is not a real threat. Finally, I would ask them if they are interested in trying out our Search feature free of charge which they can do by signing up under: https://search.censys.io/
