In this interview, our Head of Business Development & Partner, Lilia Udovychenko, talks to Roman Jasins, Co-Founder of PeakDefence, about their journey in automating cybersecurity processes with AI.
Since its inception a couple of decades ago, PeakDefence has been focused on helping companies protect their assets and manage risks. Now, they are an AI-powered security guardian angel, assisting clients in safeguarding their assets. While PeakDefence has consistently strived to scale the security expertise they have cultivated over the years, scaling anything that necessitates extensive knowledge and human resources was a formidable challenge till recently.
What triggered the initial interest in integrating AI?
Consulting work requires a lot of time to read documents, devise solutions, and check requirements against controls. Moreover, information security is a highly regulated space that demands precision, and the stakes are high when it comes to compliance.
PeakDefence has been experimenting with AI and machine learning long before the hype wave that occurred last year; they built a few prototypes years ago that solved some problems. With the generative AI revolution and rapid technological advancements, PeakDefence realized it was time to act and started looking for someone to help them build a real product. Now that the technology has finally caught up with what they wanted, PeakDefence realized they were just starting, with many more ideas in the backlog waiting to be realized.
What were the specific business challenges being addressed with this solution?
Previously, the PeakDefence team had to deal with an ever-increasing volume of repetitive tasks that drained team resources and caused burnout among employees, as well as opened up a lot of room for human error. Now, having automated some of the redundant steps while still applying higher-level human thinking, PeakDefence saves valuable time for its team while also ensuring they can offer the highest quality for highly sensitive tasks.
AI is sort of a magic touch that adds to PeakDefence’s industry experience to create real value for its customers.
What was the AI solution we built for PeakDefence, and what value did it bring?
Just like Gandalf guiding Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, AI could guide you through the security landscape with all its threats. AI systems can read and process huge volumes of information while being aware of the context, adapting to your business in real-time or near real-time. It can identify threats, rank them in terms of probability, and suggest how to distribute resources to optimize information security management. AI models continuously trained on specific requirements and expert knowledge are well-suited to take over repetitive tasks, allowing the team to focus on solving creative problems.
For example, when a company wants to get ISO 27001 certified or when NIST 2 is coming up in Europe (similar to GDPR), many companies wonder what they should do and whether these new regulations apply to them.
PeakDefense’s AI automation platform can produce deliverables like audit reports in a matter of hours, if not minutes, depending on the company’s size. This allows customers to move through compliance processes much faster without risking missing important details or skipping over crucial information. The platform enables them to provide compliance consulting to customers much faster without sacrificing the quality of their services.
How is PeakDefence gaining initial traction in the market?
This is a transitioning phase. Thanks to the Neurons Lab team, there is a working product already being used by customers. While building this first version and testing it with a few customers in early pilots, PeakDefence realized there’s so much more that we can do together. So we continue working in a very iterative process, testing out different ideas and validating them with customers to find market fit. The “startup mindset” allows us to move fast and be agile with product development, which is why PeakDefence is continuing to work with the Neurons Lab team to further improve their AI products.
What should founders keep in mind when exploring AI integration based on PeakDefence experience?
First and foremost, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and experiment. That’s how you learn. If you think you know how to do something, and it doesn’t work, let it go and try something else. Experiment. Things change really fast in the Generative AI field.
Secondly, data is key; it’s the secret sauce in cybersecurity and in general. That’s why it’s important to get your hands on the right data as early as possible. There is always a cold start problem, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be huge volumes of data. This is what PeakDefence learned firsthand while working with Neurons Lab. With the right team that understands data, you can start working on the first prototypes and see value early on. The PeakDefence team built some early prototypes, leveraging their internal expertise in information security and product development, but they could only take it so far, as data knowledge was missing. This is where the Neurons Lab team stepped in as a trusted partner in AI development.
