CI: What are the three biggest things that Commercial Integrator’s audience should know about guardDog?
Peter Bookman: I think the first one is that our devices — all of them, really — are inherently vulnerable to the networks they join or are a part of. So, it’s really important all of us know what’s on the network any given time, what they’re doing and behaving like, so we can be safe about that. So we can protect ourselves and our devices can remain safe. That’s the first one.
The second one is that typical cybersecurity or protection of those devices, or all our devices, revolves around remediation…the ability to respond when something happens. When something bad happens to devices, to the network or to anything on or around that.
And the third one is the simple act of being aware. Being able to respond and remediate really changes everything about how we think about cybersecurity. So, we’re able to rethink cybersecurity, and everyone can simply be involved in keeping their networks, their devices, everything safe through being able to know what’s going on, through being able to manage threat level and being able to remediate when something is attempted that might otherwise harm our devices—most of the time called hacking.
CI: In addition to home automation, what are the vertical markets that guardDog is addressing right now?
Bookman: “Standards of care” are the words we hear about how we apply this and how we solve this uniquely with a solution that is very simple to deploy. And through deploying, it gives that watchful care…that watchful awareness of what’s going on. And, from that, it’s able to also automatically remediate to attempts on that. So, through that, we’re seeing every vertical, really, benefit from knowing what’s going on and being able to offer these protective measures either through remediation automatically that we offer or through lowering the attack surfaces. Simply put, that’s making it so we’re harder to attack in the first place, should anyone succeed.
So, from that perspective, we’re in healthcare, we’re in financial services, we’re manufacturing, we are in insurance…. We are in most verticals because, wherever there’s a network — networks seem to be ubiquitous today — it’s highly likely there’s no one keeping watch on the network. You might be watching devices or certain amounts or portions of them. A lot of people expect the devices will protect themselves. And yet, because they’re inherently vulnerable from the network they’re on, they’re also not able to be.
So, we’re seeing it universally almost in any vertical because that standard of care of typically being able to remediate in hours or days or even longer from attempted exploits, that usually are successful, to less than half a second, automatically, really gives us a lot of air cover to be able to lower our attack surface, even when vulnerabilities are present, as well as respond to those in other ways. So, it’s really exciting. And, through partnerships, we’re really excited about being able to offer even more breadth in each one of those verticals that might be unique to each vertical.
CI: What can integrators do next to get more familiar and involved with guardDog?
Bookman: The simplest answer is just go to guarddog.ai, and you can learn more there. There’s the beginning of information from there. We have many ways to contact us — via email, via a form, via a call. And we’re excited to share more. From there, you can imagine, there’s a lot that can be shared—a lot of opportunity for breadth and growth and how this might apply not just in each vertical but within niches in each of those verticals.
Whether you’re offering solutions today and want to add cybersecurity to that. You no longer need cybersecurity expertise; you might have networking expertise and device expertise. Adding this to that really just offers that much more. So, just any of those.
But begin with the website: guarddog.ai. From there, pick your medium of choice — whether that’s social media, phone call, fill out a form — and we would be excited to share more with you and to partner with you and help solve these problems together. We’re excited about the safer world we’re creating with you.
