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10 Best Security Companies 2018

Auditing Software that can transform Enterprise Security: Titania

Auditing Software that can transform Enterprise Security: Titania

At present, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is mostly deployed in tasks that involve augmenting human decisions through high-speed analysis of vast amounts of data – and new applications for AI are emerging every single day. The next step in the cyber defense realm is to move away from machines that augment human decisions to machines with the power to make their own decisions.

Our goal is to have cyber security systems that can anticipate national security threats - from nation state cyber-attacks to rogue data leaks - and automatically reconfigure themselves and their security controls to prevent any potential breaches.

Before founding Titania and creating the company’s flagship Nipper Studio software, Founder and CEO Ian Whiting was a GCHQ accredited CHECK team leader. His role was to lead a crack team of expert Penetration Testers in their missions of securing some of the UK’s most critical networks. Ensuring the firewalls and switches (key infrastructure for network defense) were robust enough to withstand attack was vitally important - but involved investigating thousands of lines of configuration data, days of analysis and time consuming and complex report writing. Ian believed by automating these processes he would be freed to focus on more strategic, intelligent pentesting / network hardening. He first developed a solution (Nipper Studio) to automate the configuration auditing of firewalls, routers, switches and other network devices before developing another solution (Paws Studio) to audit servers, workstations laptops, enterprise applications, and databases. By virtualizing pentesting methodology and delivering it at scale and speed, Ian created a new technology that was accurate, efficient and devoid of the mass data sets, false results and inaccuracies present in legacy scanning systems’ vulnerability feeds.

Titania’s tools analyze internal system information already present on your network devices, refining mass configuration and operating system data into precise risks and remediation actions. Granular “line by line” analysis (delivered at scale) and virtual modeling technology builds human understanding into how device settings interact with each other, giving a more accurate picture of security and compliance risks.

Whilst these are powerful tools in expert hands they are yet to reach their true scale and potential. Titania is producing data feeds reliable enough to create the bedrock of accuracy needed to fully trust AI’s with automated mitigation and defense (the future goal of all their global enterprise clients).

The tools are smart enough because it automatically audits and validates compliance with globally trusted industry standards such as STIG, SANS, PCI, DCPP, and CIS (including FISMA, HIPPA, NIST, SOX, IRS 1075, FedRAMP, GLBA, ISO 27001, NERC, ETSI and CPNI) and provide prioritized mitigation advice. A built-in policy editor also enables users to modify standard policies to create custom audits from industry standard baselines (as well as building Security, Configuration and/or Vulnerability audits from scratch).

Having developed these award-winning products – he and his team then developed a business model to sell, deliver and support Titania’s products globally. Both tools can be used onsite, online, offline, in the cloud, virtually or integrated into an enterprise system. They have been independently verified as 100% accurate – and this granular accuracy has put Titania on the world stage (particularly because leading competitors have been proven only 16.4% accurate).

Today Titania’s world-leading configuration analysis software serves many industries in over 95 countries, defending both the UK and its allies’ cyber borders. Enabling cyber experts in Critical National Infrastructure to deliver robust, automated ‘Cyber Hygiene’ at scale, Titania clients include the NHS, the UK and US Governments, defense, law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, numerous banks and other organizations.

Now, having delivered the accuracy in automation that will pave the way to AIdriven self-healing / self-defending systems, Ian’s current research and development focus is on making that future a reality. Titania is working in technology partnership with other visionaries to solve the challenges of self-healing networks. As a result, Titania Group continues to win awards for security innovation and their core mission is to ‘eliminate hackers’ easy options’.

Setting up Titania was not an easy task. It’s crucial in business to have a skilled team in place with shared values and focused on an ambitious vision. When you grow and you grow rapidly, understanding ‘why’ you’re in business ensures you recruit the right people into the right roles in order to support and enable that growth. As cybersecurity is a relatively young marketplace and skilled, knowledgeable and experienced resources are at a premium, investing in the team has been key to our success to date. Finding, nurturing and enabling talent can be a major challenge for businesses – and having a CHRO in the leadership team has proved vitally important for Titania. In recent year’s CHRO Shelley Gunnel and her team has built one of the most comprehensive benefit packages in the industry, with special focus on the physical and mental wellbeing of the rapidly growing team. An integral part of the leadership team, Shelley is at the forefront of change in the business. An advocate for self-learning and continuous improvement, Shelley helps ensure that people and processes are facilitating the future growth of the company.

When asked about the company’s contribution to IT platform and society at large, Ian Whiting said, “We are firm believers in collaboration, and attracting the brightest, neuro-diverse minds into cyber security.” Titania’s Chief Strategy Officer, Nicola Whiting, is an advocate for Autism and Women in Cyber, providing government level advice on Diversity and is Worcestershire’s Commissioner for the UK Cyber Science & Innovation Audit. She is an engaging public speaker who presents keynotes on “Hacking the Human Brain”, “The Rise of Automated Attacks”, and “The Future of Automated Cyber Defences” and regularly contributes to publications such as The Huffington Post, Defence Contracts Bulletin, Defence News Online and Signal – all of which influence the global IT platform and society at large.  Meanwhile, CEO Ian Whiting recently supported the British Prime Minister on a UK cyber trade visit to Washington, helping to create closer ties between Britain and the US. Titania has also recently commissioned global research into cyber professional’s attitudes towards autonomous mitigation and self-healing systems; the results of the initial primary research have been published and a more in-depth study is to follow which will no doubt be of interest to those in cyber, and across IT. 

In the coming years, Titania products will have virtually eliminated the need for manual auditing across all Critical National Infrastructure networks, endpoints and databases. As such, Titania will have built on its current standing as a major player and key influencer in Cyber Security – in the USA, UK and around the world.

Greet the genius: Ian Whiting, Founder/ CEO

A former accredited penetration tester and an innovator in his field, Ian Whiting designed and brought to market the world’s first automated Configuration Analysis tools. Independently verified as 100% accurate, these trusted Titania products help enterprise security professionals in more than 95 countries maintain the most secure networks around the world.

Ian and Titania’s current focus is on the future of autonomous mitigation through AI - working in technology partnership with other visionaries to solve the challenges of self-healing/self-defending networks. The ultimate goal is to create automation that completely removes all hackers’ easy options, a goal which would move the balance of power from the attackers’ to the defenders’ favour.

“We’ve designed a transformative auditing solution delivering a level of granular detail and accuracy that could finally unlock the true power of AI and self-defending systems.”

“Find your network security gaps before hackers do with our security & compliance configuration auditing tools.”

“Our customer base includes organisations in finance, telecommunications, IT security and government defence industries, but any organisation that has sensitive data to protect can benefit from using our auditing tools.”


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