Read the interview with Chris Wallis, the Founder and CEO of Intruder, about Intruder's vulnerability scanning solution, which he recently gave to Safety Detectives.

Safety Detectives: What motivated you to start Intruder?

Chris Wallis: I was working in a finance organization when a new vulnerability called Heartbleed was announced. Using the tools that we had available though, it was a lot of manual effort required to go and schedule scans for it, then hunt down where we were affected. I thought that the software could be doing a much better job on our behalf. So that’s why I started Intruder.

SD: And how does your company use vulnerability scanning to reduce cyberattack exposure?

CW: We identify weaknesses for companies before they get hacked, essentially. That’s the ethos behind what we do, and we have many features that help companies to focus on the most important things, and not to get bogged down in the things that don’t matter so much.

We have emerging threat scans that scan for the latest vulnerabilities as they occur. We also have noise reduction features and prioritization features that help them focus on the ones which are most important to them not being hacked.

SD: What verticals use your company’s services?

CW: Any vertical actually. We have customers across the board but we tend to find that we’re most popular with the mid-sized organizations who don’t have as much time available in their security team or in the IT team as other larger organizations.

SD: How does your company stay ahead of the competition?

CW: We don’t tend to focus too much on the competition. We just focus on our customers. I think that if all you do is focus on your customers all day you’ll build the right solutions for them. As long as you know who your customers are and who you’re building for, you will eventually build something which is fantastic for that segment.  You’ll stand out for it without worrying too much about what your competitors are working on.

SD: What do you think are the worst cyberthreats today?

CW: For me, it seems that ransomware is the big unsolved problem at the moment. It’s catching many, many people off guard and it comes from these types of attacks which are not even really aimed at any one particular company. The attackers are just out there looking for the low-hanging fruit, and if they catch you they can cost you millions.

For example, they exploit simple vulnerabilities like things that aren’t patched but are facing the internet, or laptops that are easily accessible by email, which can catch any company off guard. People don’t think they’re being targeted, but then suddenly they get hit by this untargeted attack essentially and it’s a huge problem for many, many businesses.

SD: How do you feel COVID-19 is changing the way we’re handling cybersecurity?

CW: I think it’s exactly the same, to be honest with you. I think more people are working from home, so some traditional network-based tools are no longer effective. But we were already seeing a shift towards tools that focus on the endpoint rather than the network anyway. So I think COVID has probably, if anything, just accelerated a change that was already happening.

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