NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The cybersecurity infrastructure has had to deal with massive changes as the pandemic and the shift to work-from-home solutions hit the public. According to a survey of nearly 70 organizations conducted by Skybox, over a third of the combined workforce is expected to remain remote for at least the next 18 months. This trend will result in further dependencies on technologies such as cloud services and digital collaborative tools such as Zoom, Skype and Slack. Additionally, as millions of people transitioned to working from home, new threats have also emerged. As such, insufficiently secured personal devices, home routers, the transfer of sensitive information over unsecured or unsanctioned channels like instant messaging apps, personal e-mail addresses and cloud-based document processors are all expected to play a key role in future data breaches and hacks. Plurilock Security Inc. (TSX-V: PLUR) (OTC: PLCKF), Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS), McAfee Corp. (NASDAQ: MCFE), CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD)
Cybersecurity has been an ongoing and major issue for business and governments over the years, and technology capabilities have only increased. A few examples of major attacks from 2020 include the Nintendo breach from April, where 160,000 users were affected by a mass account hijacking; the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) breach, where 8,000 business emergency loan applications were breached; the Amtrak customer PII leak; Intel's 20GB of sensitive, corporate data breach, and of course, the FireEye hack that resulted in penetration tools being stolen from one of the world's largest security firms. "[Companies] by shifting the responsibility and work of running hardware and software infrastructure to cloud providers, leveraging the economics of cloud elasticity, benefiting from the pace of innovation in sync with public cloud providers, and more," says David Smith, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner, according to a report by Threat Post.
Plurilock Security Inc. (TSX-V: PLUR) (OTC: PLCKF) announced earlier last month that the company provided, "frictionless and continuous authentication using machine learning and behavioral biometrics, is pleased to provide the following corporate update for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Industry Outlook
Cybersecurity is a crucial element for organizations with deep security needs such as healthcare and financial services companies. Given the nature of recent cyberattacks that target these organizations, the need for advanced cybersecurity solutions will increase and according to Cyber Security Ventures, Global Cybersecurity spending is predicted to exceed $1 Trillion USD from 2017-2021.
In preparation for the anticipated growth in the cybersecurity sector, Plurilock has made some key developments since going public this year to address and capitalize on this global opportunity.
Key Developments
Public Listing
On September 24th, 2020, the Company began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker PLUR after completing a qualifying transaction ("QT") with Libby K Industries, Inc. on September 17, 2020. Plurilock also completed a concurrent financing with the QT, which saw the Company successfully raise $2.6 million. The concurrent financing was led by PI Financial and included Industrial Alliance Securities.
Expert Advisory Board and Advisors
The Company assembled an Advisory Board consisting of technology sector experts to provide guidance to Plurilock on planning and executing strategic initiatives while accelerating the growth of the Company. Members of the Advisory Board include Dr. Issa Traoré, Ph.D., Merv Chia and Mark Orsmond.
Additionally, the Company appointed two veteran multinational security leaders, Gaétan Houle and Chris Pierce as advisors to the Company. Mr. Houle has held various security leadership roles in reputable government agencies such as the Canadian Federal Government, Department of National Defence and the former Department of Foreign Affairs, now known as Global Affairs Canada. Mr. Pierce is an accomplished executive and consultant who oversaw the international division of Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation and led the development of Booz Allen's international business strategy.
Partnerships and Relationships
- A new product collaboration with identity and access management ("IAM") provider Gluu, including the inclusion of native Plurilock support in standard Gluu releases going forward.
- The services of Government Sales Specialists, LLC, an outsourced federal sales agency, were retained by the Company to grow its pipeline of government sales.
- Completion of the first milestone of a US$198,000 contract with the US Department of Homeland Security, for which the Company received US$70,000.
- A major US financial services firm awarded a US$42,000 annual recurring contract to Plurilock to deploy the Company's core authentication solutions.
Certification and Compliance Program –
The Company launched its new certification and compliance program in November 2020, engaging highly regarded automated security and compliance firm Vanta Inc. to provide advisory services in pursuit of System and Organization Controls 2 ("SOC2") standard compliance.
Core Product Initiatives and Updates
The Company engaged in and launched a number of product-related items and initiatives, including:
- The launch of Plurilock's new mobile applications for iOS and Android, now available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, respectively.
- Release of a new version of Plurilock's core ADAPT and DEFEND software platform adding support for enterprise-environment proxy services, new versions for Mac OS, and enhanced server reliability.
- The launch of a re-engineered customer service and support experience to optimize issue mean-time-to-resolution ("MTTR") and accelerate client assistance availability.
2021 Outlook - During 2021, the Company plans to continue focusing on a number of initiatives to drive its growth strategy including:
- Strategic M&A activity with a focus on profitable organizations with which the Company can cross-sell existing high margin Plurilock products
- Organic sales growth through established channel partners and a direct sales force
- Further investment in the company's MFA authentication technology and IP portfolio
- Additional platform integrations that can expand sales
- Investor awareness initiatives
'2020 was an exciting year for the team at Plurilock as we completed a number of milestones, including a successful public listing on the TSXV in September," said Ian Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. "Despite the headwinds of the pandemic, we have seen an increase in enterprise customers looking to secure their infrastructure from cyber threats. Given the growth outlook of the sector, we believe in 2021 the team we have assembled will enable us to grow organically through direct sales to enterprise customers while we seek to strategically deploy resources through acquisitions.'
About Plurilock - Plurilock is an innovative, identity-centric cybersecurity company that reduces or eliminates the need for passwords, extra authentication steps, and cumbersome authentication devices. Plurilock's software leverages state-of-the-art behavioral-biometric, environmental, and contextual technologies to provide invisible, adaptive, and risk-based authentication solutions with the lowest possible cost and complexity. Plurilock enables organizations to compute safely-and with peace of mind."
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Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP) reported last month that it has been chosen by NHS National Services Scotland, the publicly funded healthcare service in Scotland to secure and streamline the management of its public cloud data, and provide complete threat prevention for vital public services such as Scotland's 'Test & Protect' and vaccine management services. "Check Point's CloudGuard has been key in enabling us to add new cloud workloads and services without needing to constantly review or deploy new security infrastructure. This means we can focus on the critical public-facing tasks where we can add real value, such as developing and running Scotland's 'Test & Protect' services," said Deryck Mitchelson, Chief Information Security Officer, NHS Scotland. "Right now we are building our vaccination management systems, and our cloud-first approach gives us the agility and scalability we need to roll it out nationally while being sure that data and services are secured."
Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS) announced last month a security assessment program designed to help organizations assess the SolarWinds supply-chain attack, analyze potential impact on their organization, and inform adherence to Zscaler's recommended best practices. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform modernizes enterprise security with a breakthrough approach that reduces the attack surface, prevents attackers from moving freely across the organizations, and stops command-and-control activity to limit the impact of SUNBURST and other supply chain attacks. Zscaler's in-line cloud security platform delivers the industry's most comprehensive visibility into enterprise internet traffic, processing over 150 billion daily requests, to power up prevention against threats like SUNBURST.
McAfee Corp. (NASDAQ: MCFE) reported earlier last month announced that McAfee MVISION Insights has been named the winner of the "Endpoint Security Solution of the Year" award in the fourth annual CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards program conducted by CyberSecurity Breakthrough, a leading independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global information security market. McAfee MVISION Insights leverages McAfee's cutting-edge threat research, augmented with sophisticated Artificial intelligence (AI) applied to real-time threat telemetry streamed from over 1 billion sensors. The integration of MVISION Insights significantly enhances the capabilities of McAfee's endpoint security platform by managing the attack surface, preventing ransomware and aiding security teams to easily investigate and respond to advanced attacks.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD) announced last month the release of the annual CrowdStrike Services Cyber Front Lines Report, which brings together the insights and observations of CrowdStrike's global incident response (IR) and proactive services teams in 2020. reveals the broad-reaching impact remote work has had on cybersecurity, as corporate networks around the world were turned inside out to accommodate remote workers. "Remote work has redefined the playing field between cyber attackers and defenders, and that's clearly demonstrated in the CrowdStrike Services Cyber Front Lines Report. Corporate networks now span both office and home, providing a wealth of new attack surfaces and vectors that adversaries can exploit," said Shawn Henry, chief security officer and president of CrowdStrike Services at CrowdStrike. "Holistic coordination and continued vigilance are key in detecting and stopping sophisticated intrusions. Because of this, we're seeing a necessary shift from one-off emergency engagements to continuous monitoring and response. This will better enable incident response teams to help customers drastically reduce the average time to detect, investigate and remediate from 162 hours to less than 60 minutes."
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