RiskIQ: Providing Petabytes of Internet Data at your Fingertips

Modern organizations are rapidly embracing the web, social and importantly, mobile technology. It’s the need of the hour. Be it to engage with customers, employees, or even their partners, every organization throws its doors open on the web. This is also an entryway for the attacks to start coming through. And presently, the magnitude and sophistication of these attacks are increasing, along with the exposure outside the firewall. Next, it becomes the question of reputation for an organization and could adversely impact its business operations.

Such scenarios have shown us that the internal security and traditional perimeter in the organization’s network framework are less effective. The IT security team would need improved internet intelligence, security that is well established, and proactive analytic solutions. When the threats are especially prone to come from outside, these defense mechanisms are required to cover the surface of the digital attack.

The founders of RiskIQ: Elias “Lou” Manousos, Chris Kiernan, and David Pon completely understood the entire security situation that organizations undergo. They have developed solutions that help organizations take charge of their digital presence and fight these threats that could damage the organization.  Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, RiskIQ has helped many well-known brands and other security-savvy enterprises. More than 40,000 security analysts have benefited by RiskIQ to tackle the digital threat challenges across geographical boundaries and industries.

“Data is our DNA”

While RiskIQ is primarily a cybersecurity company, it has its strong link with data. RiskIQ mainly provides Software as a Service (SaaS) for various organizations. Detecting frauds, malware, phishing, and other major security threats are what RiskIQ assists you with. The company believes that it provides the most comprehensive and internet-scale datasets that are available out there. Yes, RiskIQ delivers petabytes of internet data, right at your fingertips.

“At RiskIQ, data is in our DNA,” says Elias Manousos, one of the founders and also the CEO. “Since our inception, we have been gathering petabytes of passive DNS and WHOIS data, and through our crawling of the entire internet, have amassed data sets that include SSL certificates, newly observed domains, web and analytics trackers, mobile apps, and the components that make up the web pages we see every day.”

So what do you do with this data? Data is immensely valuable. The datasets are used by security experts and professionals. There are threat and risk analysts who join the dots and read between the lines to present a link with the threat infrastructure. These professionals use the data to understand the attack patterns and vectors that are used by attackers. After all, the mission of the company is “to enable broader, safe internet engagement by providing organizations the most comprehensive visibility, insight, and protection over threats outside the firewall.”

Data, Security, and Values

• Reduce operational, reputational risk
• Optimize resources
• Reduce time to detection and response
• Increase defense efficacy
• Fortify compliance

Data for Security

Security defenders, hunters, brand managers, and overall security operations are enabled with the suite of security solutions from RiskIQ. “With 75 percent of attacks originating outside the firewall, RiskIQ helps organizations protect businesses, customers, and brands across digital channels,” explains Elias.

It again comes to data. It doesn’t matter where the data is from. Be it from WHOIS, Passive DNS, or just about any other public internet data source, RiskIQ has got it covered. And not to forget the 300 million mobile devices, 150 global app stores, or the 16 million mobile apps! Data from all of these mobile app telemetries are used for monitoring actions and profiles, even from the top-notch social media platforms.

“RiskIQ’s application of machine learning, data science, and research acumen yields comprehensive intelligence, pragmatic insights, and derived information housed in an elastic analytics warehouse – allowing customers to save time by serving up critical relationships, exploits, issues, and adversary infrastructure across a complex, dynamic digital landscape,” he concludes.

Customer Success

“PassiveTotal (from RiskIQ) has been extremely helpful for our operations in responding to and preventing attacks. It is definitely a must-have tool for us from this point forward. It fortifies our internal security systems and can integrate with other security tools to automate and consolidate once manual actions across multiple systems.”

–Gary Ruiz, Rackspace, Senior Manager for Cybersecurity

The Trailblazer

Elias (Lou) Manousos, Founder and CEO

Elias is a recognized expert in internet security and fraud prevention. He has been developing and delivering enterprise protection technologies for more than 15 years. As CEO of RiskIQ, he has spearheaded a new approach that helps internet, financial services, healthcare, media, and consumer packaged goods companies protect their brands from online fraud. Elias is also co-chair of the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) Anti-Malvertising Working Group and is responsible for Malvertisements.com, the first and only public database documenting malvertising incidents on a continuous basis. Prior to RiskIQ, Elias was VP of R&D at Securant Technologies (acquired by RSA), which pioneered identity and access management for web applications. At Securant, he was instrumental in creating now-commonplace technologies for single sign-on (SSO) security.

“With 75 percent of attacks originating outside the firewall, RiskIQ helps organizations protect businesses, customers, and brands across digital channels.”

“At RiskIQ, data is in our DNA.”