Maximize Speed, Minimize Risk: Guardicore’s Cloud Platform Helps Accelerate Digital Transformation and Protect Critical Assets

Protect Critical It Assets With Guardicore

TL; DR: Guardicore, a security company designed specifically for virtualized datacenters and cloud environments, protects your organization’s most critical IT systems. The company reduces risk and cuts costs by safeguarding infrastructure through high visibility, microsegmentation controls, and real-time response services. With a focus on continuous innovation, Guardicore aims to stay ahead of the security curve in a rapidly changing threat landscape.

The Israeli Defense Force’s Unit 8200, the largest arm of Israel’s military, is one of the leading technical intelligence agencies on the planet — comparable in function to the NSA. Known for its advanced capabilities and collective technical expertise, the unit plays a role in combating terrorism through code decryption and the collection of signal intelligence.

It was in Unit 8200 that Ariel Zeitlin and Pavel Gurvich met. Like the rest of the unit, the two soldiers were recruited based on their ability to learn new concepts rapidly and independently. For more than a decade, Ariel and Pavel worked closely and successfully with their unit on cutting-edge tech solutions for the Israeli Intelligence Corps.

After completing their military service, the pair leveraged the knowledge gained developing defensive measures to found the online security company Guardicore. “Embedded in the Unit 8200 philosophy is the importance of being resourceful, so the goal was to quickly arm security professionals with the most useful tools available,” said Chris Gaebler, Chief Marketing Officer at Guardicore.

Guardicore logo

Guardicore’s founders leveraged their experience developing security measures for Israel’s renowned intelligence agency to build the company.

From there, Ariel and Pavel assembled a strong security team from within Israel and beyond, including Co-Founder Dror Sal’ee, with the goal of providing simple, fast solutions that guarantee consistent and robust security defense. Today, Guardicore is a fully developed datacenter and cloud security company devoted to protecting the core assets of an organization through intuitive microsegmentation controls, unparalleled visibility, active breach detection, and real-time response.

Most recently, the company recently raised $60 million in Series C funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $110 million. The funds will help fuel company growth and ensure continued disruption in firewall and datacenter markets. Ultimately, the company’s goal is to stay ahead of the security curve in a rapidly changing threat landscape through the power of continuous innovation.

A Comprehensive Approach to Protecting Infrastructure From Within

Unlike some organizations, Guardicore’s approach to security prioritizes the company’s most critical assets, rather than endpoint devices. “We’re starting with the digital crown jewels as our focal point — beginning with what matters most and then working out from there versus working in from the outside,” Chris said.

In terms of threat detection, Guardicore provides multiple strategies designed for the unique requirements of the cloud. To ensure that every live breach is contained, the company employs three simultaneous detection methods: Dynamic Deception, used to identify and engage attackers without disrupting performance; Reputation Analysis, which detects suspicious presence within traffic flows; and Policy-Based Detection, which provides immediate recognition of unauthorized communications and traffic.

Threat detection and response

Guardicore’s multiple threat detection methods address all types of attacks.

The company’s analytic tools help users investigate each incident, exposing credentials and propagation methods with tags to help classify specific trends. Guardicore’s real-time threat detection is then paired with actionable intelligence on the tools and techniques used by attackers. As a result, the system can provide instant response recommendations. It also works to accelerate incident response by offering mitigation options, updating segmentation policies, and triggering actions on virtual machines to prevent the spread of damage.

Guardicore recognizes that more companies are choosing to combine cloud and on-premise resources to gain the agility inherent in hybrid cloud infrastructure. With that in mind, the company has created end-to-end security controls that prevent breaches from spreading inside datacenter and cloud environments while eliminating the need for multiple solutions in hybrid clouds.

“Some of our best customers still have Solaris servers and old Windows servers that they’re not going to give up on because, you know, they work,” Chris said. “One of the key differentiators for Guardicore is the ability to protect not only the on-prem solution or the cloud solution but also the legacy gear.”

Delivering Visibility to Enable Microsegmentation

Guardicore empowers businesses to prevent breaches and lateral movements through greater visibility and the use of microsegmentation. “Our visibility solution is used to provide a constructive understanding of how the network looks across its topography, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle,” he said. “It’s most valuable because it allows you to see the full picture before defining microsegmentation policies.”

Microsegmentation, Chris said, can be seen as a type of next-generation firewall. As IT infrastructure becomes more complex, the ability to isolate applications and access to various datasets becomes increasingly important. “The payoff of a microsegmentation project is that you radically reduce your risk surface,” he said.

That said, these deployments are often difficult to execute. But Guardicore’s tagline is “Critical Assets. Simply Secured. Anywhere.” To simplify microsegmentation policy management in hybrid cloud environments, the Guardicore Centra platform’s Flexible Policy Engine allows customers to design compliance rules for macrosegments while also defining granular rules for microsegments. Automated rule suggestions are also available based on historical observations.

Chris said there’s somewhat of a gap between payoff and promise when it comes to the cloud — especially in terms of security. Therefore, businesses deploying applications in cloud and hybrid environments need to make sure they’ve covered all of the bases to protect themselves. “You may assume they’re secure, but the security protocols of Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, or any cloud provider, really, are limited, and that’s where there’s a great opportunity for Guardicore to step in,” he said.

An Effective Solution for Reducing Risk and Cutting Costs

The right security solution can deliver a range of benefits. Chris said one of Guardicore’s biggest perks is its ability to reduce digital risk in a measurable way. “The art of cyber risk analysis gets complicated, but there are tools out there to quantify how you’re reducing your risk surface,” he said. “And, as threats inherent in lateral movement within an IT environment go down, so does overall business risk.”

Lower labor costs are another pleasant side effect. Chris said there’s simply not enough talent to deal with the tidal wave of online risk headed toward businesses. The key to survival is enabling security teams to do more with less.

Some of the more complex segmentation solutions on the market can take weeks or months to deploy, Chris said. “If an effective segmentation with Guardicore takes one day instead of the typical month, you’ll have 29 days to work on other projects,” he said. “That’s a quantifiable benefit because, in the security field, there are never enough resources.”

In addition to improving security posture and reducing costs, microsegmentation is a powerful tool for ensuring cloud services comply with various industry and jurisdictional regulations — from HIPAA and PCI to GDPR. Security teams within regulated organizations can use microsegmentation policies to isolate systems subject to regulations and control how they communicate with one another. Guardicore’s visibility solutions can also help streamline regulatory audits, cutting costs and improving accuracy.

Designed to grow in step with clients, Guardicore’s solutions are scalable enough to meet the performance and security requirements of any size environment, from SMB to enterprise.

Ongoing Evolution Within a Focused Market

Chris said Guardicore operates within a “customer-obsessed” environment. The company’s founders still hop on a plane every month to visit with customers face to face, and Guardicore also consults with a customer advisory board to listen to their perspectives.

Customer feedback frequently informs ongoing development efforts within a defined market perimeter.

“The software-defined datacenter zone is where we are our best, and we’re always evolving within that space to offer enhanced protection around a company’s core assets,” he said.

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