Security Roundup: Symbol Security, Vade, Barracuda, DigiCert

A New Jersey-based cybersecurity startup is rolling out a new phishing simulation platform and plans to make a big channel play next year.

Symbol Security, a SaaS-based phishing simulation and training company, formed in April and has been in product development and beta testing with customers. It is now offering its platform to the general public.

Symbol Security’s Craig Sandman

Craig Sandman, Symbol’s president and co-founder, tells us his company expects to see “tremendous growth — and we’re built for tremendous growth.”

“It’s a highly automated, highly scalable SaaS platform, so there will be no limitations from an architecture growth perspective,” he said.

Sandman said there are email security services designed to prevent phishing from occurring, and yet 90 percent of security breaches begin with a phish posing as a benign email, with “people walking through the front door, not peeking in the window or through the chimney.”

“You have to train people to be aware and recognize what a phishing email looks like because this problem is not going away,” he said. “When we looked at the market a number of months ago, we felt that the phishing training and phishing simulation services out there, while they were effective, they didn’t really get authentic enough to really test and train users through real-life experiences so that they could recognize and prevent themselves from clicking on a bad URL.”

The phishing simulation not only includes real phishing that has occurred, but customized phishing templates with vendors a company works with — and not just big-name vendors, but local ones too.

“What we’re finding is cybercriminals are dropping down in the market, taking the time to target you, finding out who you are, and [launching] a specific phishing attack against you,” Sandman said. “By offering a very reasonably priced phishing simulation tool that can be delivered by security firms, that can be delivered by IT channel partners that are custom advisers, we believe we can get the right level of authentic phishing simulation to businesses that really need some help.”

Symbol is in the early stages of developing its partner program, Sandman said. It now is starting to approach the market with the format and pricing structures for channel-partner relationships, he said.

“There are channel partners that we’re beginning to work with, but the broader channel community doesn’t necessarily know that our doors are open for business,” he said. “Later after New Year’s and leading up to the Channel Partners Conference and Expo in Las Vegas, that’s when we’ll announce our partner program, and we’ll announce the partner portal and everything like that. There’s going to be some time needed to prepare the market and the channel partners for whom we are and what we’re doing.”

Symbol is targeting MSPs and MSSPs, as well agents that can make sales of third-party services to customers, Sandman said. The company has beta customers that will transition into production-level customers, but “we have not yet really put the gas down on going out and attracting production-level customers yet,” he said.

“It fits all verticals, but those that have the highest sensitivity to breaches or those whose information is the most valuable — medical and health-care companies, absolutely,” he said. “We know that patient records in the health-care space sell for 100 times what most other personal information sells for on the dark web, so therefore you can make a significant impact on lowering risk by simply preventing the next phishing from being successful.”

Symbol’s platform also is geared toward …