Coralogix makes foray into cyber security with Snowbit

What problems are you trying to solve with your venture and portfolio?

Navdeep Manaktala: Coralogix is an Israel-based leading provider of machine learning-powered log analytics and monitoring solutions. The problems we are trying to address emerge from how people are spending more and more time online, how enterprises are accelerating digital transformation, and how the sophistication of attacks – as well as gravity of cyber risks – has exploded.

Plus, all this is happening amid an acute shortage of cyber security talent – there are just not enough security professionals in organisations and the ones that are present also need constant upskilling.

Many companies take a few days, on average, to recover from a cyber security incident. The cost of attack is huge in terms of downtime, resources and productivity loss. Imagine how that will play out with the cloud.

While investing in cloud brings scalability and elasticity, the attack surface also expands. Plus, there is complexity in managing multiple providers and platforms. Most security solutions focus on one function. We provide enterprises with the ability to deploy multiple security solutions and make it all affordable.

How do you accomplish that?

Manaktala: Building on the strengths of the Coralogix data streaming platform, we have built our MxDR [managed extended detection and response] platform that has telemetry, observability and proactive control capabilities. It seamlessly ingests and enriches a broad range of data sources and scans your cloud environment for abnormal activity and configuration, network and vulnerability issues.

With a real-time view of what’s happening or what’s wrong, we can arm an organisation with best practices while meeting compliance requirements. Our expert team at the security resource centre is also well-versed in threat hunting and incident response.

Incidentally, visibility into data-in-motion emerged as a big issue in a recent Gartner study as well. What makes observability so important and so tough to crack?

Manaktala: Observability is a big issue. Enterprises that have invested in cloud can have multiple data sources, multiple devices and a large technology stack. Real-time observability capabilities can ingest logs from all systems so that one can trace an issue to the exact point.

According to a survey from Cloud Security Alliance, cloud issues and misconfigurations are the dominant causes of breaches and outages. Are bad configurations to be blamed?

Manaktala: People can get sloppy about configurations. Plus, it is unwieldy to check all configurations, devices and platforms all the time. It can get difficult. That’s why the proactive stance that we are building becomes salient.

Coralogix plans to invest $30m in India over five years. Why India?

Manaktala: India is significant, both as a market and as a source of capability for meeting our global needs.

India and Israel are our initial focus markets given our large customer base and the growing number of cloud-native businesses in both countries. Snowbit will have its operations – R&D, product development, and expert teams – across India and Israel to leverage the best of Israeli cyber security talent and India’s unique position to become the cyber security hub of the world.

Whether we look at the Google-Mandiant deal, or the way Microsoft is bolstering its security stack, many cloud giants are getting a foot into security. How do you stand out?

Manaktala: Those players are specialists in their fields. Their speed of evolution is fast. We bring innovation in an affordable and simple-to-handle way while meeting the compliance needs of businesses. This helps enterprises in a holistic way.

What are your thoughts on the breakthroughs in quantum computing and artificial intelligence in cyber security?

Manaktala: We have barely scratched the surface. We have machine learning capabilities, but I believe that there is a lot of fundamental work that remains to be done in cyber security. It cannot be about the shiny new thing unless the industry cracks the basics first.

What is your roadmap for the global security centre? How soon, and in what direction, will it scale up?

Manaktala: The centre is staffed by security analysts, security researchers, and threat hunting teams. We have 40 level one and level two security analysts, and we will ramp up to full strength by mid-year. Our security research team can support our global clients in many areas. This is very useful for enterprises as cyber security talent is becoming difficult to hire, develop and keep in the current era.