In 7 Minutes on ITSPmagazine Short Brand Story recorded on location during Black Hat USA 2024, Sean Martin had a fascinating conversation with Snehal Antani, CEO and Co-Founder of Horizon3.ai. The discussion revolved around the innovative strides Horizon3.ai is making in autonomous penetration testing and continuous security posture management.
Snehal Antani shared his journey from being a CIO to founding Horizon3.ai, highlighting the critical gaps in traditional security measures that led to the inception of the company. The main focus at Horizon3.ai is to continuously verify security postures through autonomous penetration testing, essentially enabling organizations to "hack themselves" regularly to stay ahead of potential threats. Antani explained the firm's concept of “go hack yourself,” which emphasizes continuous penetration testing. This approach ensures that security vulnerabilities are identified and addressed proactively rather than reacting after an incident occurs.
A significant portion of the discussion centered around the differentiation between application and infrastructure penetration testing. While application pen testing remains a uniquely human task due to the need for identifying logic flaws in custom code, infrastructure pen testing can be effectively managed by algorithms at scale. This division allows Horizon3.ai to implement a human-machine teaming workflow, optimizing the strengths of both.
Antani likened its functionality to installing ring cameras while conducting a pen test, creating an early warning network through the deployment of honey tokens. These tokens are fake credentials and sensitive command tokens designed to attract attackers, triggering alerts when accessed. This early warning system helps organizations build a high signal, low noise alert mechanism, enhancing their ability to detect and respond to threats swiftly.
Antani emphasized that Horizon3.ai is not just a pen testing company but a data company. The data collected from each penetration test provides valuable telemetry that improves algorithm accuracy and offers insights into an organization’s security posture over time. This data-centric approach allows Horizon3.ai to help clients understand and articulate their security posture’s evolution.
A compelling example highlighted in the episode involved a CISO from a large chip manufacturing company who utilized Horizon3.ai’s rapid response capabilities to address a potential vulnerability swiftly. The CISO was able to identify, test, fix, and verify the resolution of a critical exploit within two hours, showcasing the platform's efficiency and effectiveness.
The conversation concluded with a nod to the practical benefits such innovations bring, encapsulating the idea that effective use of Horizon3.ai’s tools not only promotes better security outcomes but also enables security teams to perform their roles more efficiently, potentially even getting them home earlier.
Learn more about Horizon3.ai: https://itspm.ag/horizon3ai-bh23
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Guest: Snehal Antani, Co-Founder & CEO at Horizon3.ai [@Horizon3ai]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/snehalantani/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/snehalantani
