The Gately Report: Centripetal Brings Vast Threat Intelligence to Cyber Fight

Centripetal Networks arms its partners with vast amounts of threat intelligence to thwart cybercriminals’ ever-changing tactics.

That’s according to Dave Silke, the company’s CMO. Centripetal recently made major headlines after a federal jury in Virginia ordered Palo Alto Networks to pay the company $151.5 million in damages after finding it violated the company’s patent rights. Palo Alto Networks said it plans to appeal.

With this in mind, we take a closer look at Centripetal. The company provides threat intelligence-powered cybersecurity.

“Intelligence has always been a focus at the company,” Silke said. “A lot of the intellectual property development and R&D over the last 10 years has been focused on the area of intelligence and the understanding of how intelligence needs to be used proactively to protect customers. So as a company, we work with about 250 suppliers of cyber threat intelligence. We take one of the largest collections of data in the world into a solution that we call CleanInternet, that can sit on-premises or in the cloud. And we use an awful lot of intelligence, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to be able to use that solution at machine-level speed. So as we recognize a threat coming into a network, we can automatically shield a customer from that threat using the intelligence.”

Related:Palo Alto Networks to Pay Centripetal $151.5 Million in Patent Suit

People Augment Threat Intelligence

Centripetal also augments that intelligence with people, Silke said.

Centripetal's Dave Silke

“So in a lot of cases, as part of our managed service, there will typically be an analyst that is assigned to each of our customers, and that analyst will utilize intelligence, but they'll also utilize their human intelligence in terms of being able to understand the customer's network, understand potential weak points within the customer's network," he said. "And one of the most important jobs is to be able to communicate back what those threats are so they can have a conversation. In the majority of cases, the solution that we're using is using intelligence. It's using both AI and ML. But very importantly, it's also using that human intelligence to make sure that we provide that analysis back to any of the customers and have that conversation with them.”

AI Prompts Fear, Questions

There’s still a lot of fear and questions in the channel when it comes to AI and cybersecurity, Silke said.

“I think you have to augment your solution with AI and not be afraid of it, because if you're afraid of AI, you're just going to get left behind,” he said. “So a lot of partners will ask, ‘How do I utilize AI as part of my cybersecurity solution to protect customers?' Because you have these automated attacks. And our answer to that would be, we can provide you with a fully managed service that utilizes AI and the development that we put into our security as a vendor, and we can help you on that journey.”

It’s important for partners to understand all aspects of AI – the positives, negatives and concerns – because ultimately the customer is going to have that conversation with the partner, Silke said.

“It's unlikely to be the vendor, but we would be very open,” he said. “We would do a lot of communication with not just our customers, but with our partners about the evolving cybersecurity landscape, the evolving threats and also the understanding of how do I use intelligence, and is it something that I need to be afraid of, or is it something that I need to endorse and use. We'll be really open, especially with our partners, to make sure that we take the time to explain all facets of intelligence when it comes to cybersecurity.”

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