Historical Misalignment of IT Teams for Physical Devices – Roy Dagan, SecuriThings

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrong TV. Our next guest has been on here before.

It's Roy Dagon Roy is the co-founder and CEO of security things and maybe you don't know security things and and you know, we're gonna find out more about them in a second Roy. Welcome back. How are you?

Good good. Thanks for having us having me. Okay now you A pleasure pleasure to have you on so Roy as I mentioned not everyone in our audience may be familiar familiar with security things.

So I'm going to ask you to kind of level set for us here what the company's about and look you're the co-founder CEO. Let's hear a little bit about your background and why you felt so passionate to co-found this company. Joe so my bike and is many in the tech industry before that also in one of the intelligence units in the Israeli Defense Forces.

What I did my entire career before started security things was product management. I was a product manager. I led teams of product managers different companies including RSA knife systems and some other companies and then when we started security things initially we were trying to focus on the cyber security challenge of iot devices and about large and then we saw the more we were speaking with the you know, with end customers and also system integrators.

We saw that Enterprise is having a huge challenge today managing devices such as physical security devices. So if you look at an Enterprise today, they may have hundreds or 1000s or tens of thousands of devices such as cameras Access Control Systems into comms shooting detection many many devices These teams are responsible for and they come in various types various versions phone versions models and it's pretty complex environment at the same time. By the way, they're not these teams are not responsible for the network.

Right, so their responsible devices. They're the experts of the devices. They're the technology Experts of these devices, but when it comes to the network, typically it networking team.

Somebody else owns the network and we saw the things that for us kind of trivial coming from the it and cyber background thinking about how you monitor it systems how you maintain upgrade all these kind of at these things with trivial for us, but then when we were looking at these teams and specifically in the realm of physical security, we saw that it's pretty impossible pretty much impossible. There's no I'd say there's no coolant it system. to manage these devices So that's exactly what we decided back then that we're going to do so we kind of built the I'd say the ultimate it system but full physical security teams in the future.

We'll also expand additional operational teams and the system helps them automatically manage these devices so many things that they are doing today mostly reactively or in the better case, maybe manually, but you know manually means once in a while, we basically automated all for them. It's a great description. You know, right I think.

What makes it hard and you touched on it right in the beginning is this such a variety? Of of things that are connected today, you know, you have Legacy stuff that really wasn't. I mean the relatively simple open shut kind of switches or stuff like that not really made to be upgradable or even actually managed per se.

Right from a security point of view. It's on or it's off right and and then you know and then you have sort of more modern connected things that were made with more Headroom with the ability to upgrade but with that. Technology also comes more risk probably in terms of security and and then you're right right.

You're you're Knowledge and and capabilities can't stop when at the point where it plugs in to a network because what goes on in that network has so much. Influence and say over what how that device. You know is is used.

I mean you gave some great examples cameras and stuff like that. I I think more like in a hospital for instance, right every single thing in a hospital today is connected whether it's the pump pumping IV fluids into you or the heart monitors or I mean think about it. They you know, good friend of mine said every hospital has three different networks.

There's the regular item Network where they do business apar a jar stuff like that. Then there's a separate Network for all of these connected device. Right, and and that's the kind of a mission critical Network too because those devices are mission critical.

Even the MRI machines and all of that and then there's yet a third network the doctors and those people use because we can't trust them to do security to behave in a secure fashion. So we got to kind of isolate them. This is a tremendous.

Is this complex? It's hard. It's hard to to do this so it and then you know.

55 billion connected things in the next whatever it is five years or something. What do you got rocks he had why did you? Watch one on right what this is a big task.

So I think bottom phase that we you know, you spoke about that 55 number right how many so many devices will be with being in the future. We basically saw they're already so many devices out there. We don't need to wait for the future for the new generation of connected devices which are coming out there.

If you look at it in a modern Enterprise today, he gave some examples of the you know, in the hospital only Healthcare space. They're already so many connected devices and we just decided to focus on one which is already there. You have a very clear stakeholder within the Enterprise you have teams, you know, if we talk about physical security you have teams which are responsible for those Technologies.

They are access they are professionals when it comes to the technology, you know, they know what camera they need, which Access Control how to install them how to work with the rest of Partners and things like that, but when it comes to, you know having the basic monitoring Maintenance things like that. They're just missing the information. So sometimes even when they work with their it counterparts the you know, it is really it's used for so many years to have all those systems and data and everything is about it the data right for many years.

And what we saw is that these teams are missing the data. So there's always also becoming kind of a lang a language cap kind of between the team. So this something that we need to also Bridge so when the physical security teams wants to Analyze an incident but they won't need the help of the IT team.

They can also come with to them with ride level of data. So the IT team can quickly help them. If you're not coming with the arrival of data, it will just say hey guys, it's your device.

It's not us. It's not the network. It's the device the moment.

We saw that we started, you know, deploying a few years ago. We started deploying the system and various environments immediately. It kind of level the playing field.

And suddenly things which took them, you know, which were not working in the network for maybe a couple of years. Finally. Once the users of our system came to it came to the networking team with the right level of data.

That's it. It said okay. This is all we need now.

We understand what the problem is. We can solve it tomorrow. Absolutely.

All right. So look. secure things is not the only organization or the only provider that is kind of focusing in on this space.

What what's what's your Edge? No, no pun intended there, right? What's what's your Edge?

What's the special sauce that sets you apart? So yeah, we like the word Edge this space. So this is a huge blue ocean right now and there's actually no one that it does exactly what we do and also the reason you know for the recent round.

We just announced there's also part of obviously because of that and the type of customers we haven't serve but part of it is the depth of the technology and capabilities. We have also on the edge the actual Edge devices then we have Partnerships. We have Partnerships with the system integrators in space.

We're also Partnerships with manufacturers So Many Factors realize that they need to also work with us because of the type of end customers that we serve and then also in terms of the you know the system so now it's really platform. You can connect many types of devices to the Platforms in terms of the coverage. It does for an Enterprise.

You can perform so many Tasks right from the level of monitoring to the level of upgrading devices analyzing recalls of alerts restarting devices rotating passwords, then also collaborating with other teams. So collaborating and sending automated tickets to maybe servicenow or Splunk or the systems within the Enterprise because we know that whoever is using our system is also working with other, you know with their counterparts within the Enterprise which have a bunch of other tools that they are used to work with. Understood you mentioned the recent round.

We should really flush that out. Tell us more. Yeah, so we raised we announced I think it's about a month ago around from 21 million dollar round LED by us Venture partners.

And again, I think they they just saw you know, what were working on they saw the blue ocean. They saw the huge Market opportunity. They saw the type of customers we have and yeah, and they were just bullish and wanted to join invest in the company.

What congratulations I mean in? Yeah, I don't have to tell you the macroeconomic conditions are really impacting companies abilities to raise money. And to raise thank you healthy round.

Yeah, I know. Thank you. I mean that's indicative of something so, right.

As you mentioned it's a blue ocean. Right? It's a huge opportunity.

It's a big Market out there. What do you you know and here we are coming into the end of 2022. Looking ahead.

Where do you see? Where you going? Next what you know, what's the next steps here that?

will help not secure things per se but our audience in dealing with with this particular problem or issue. Yeah, it's a good question and question and I think especially in this market budgets are not going to become bigger right organizations. Definitely not it's gonna be hard that grow the headcrowns and that's where we see the platform in the capables that we provide an Enterprise.

It really provides a lot when it comes to cost savings and all the automation because the essence of the platform is really to enable you as an advice to automate things that you are either doing manually or you can't do today because they're so hard so looking into also, you know into 2023. I think a lot of the opportunities around cost savings and helping organizations do more with the existing team that they have in place. So then the existing team can really focus more on the Strategic.

It's a strategic tasks, but also at the same time, you know, that's not forget organizations are paying millions of dollars every year for these types of Systems in their environments right for physical security because it's so Mission critical. It's so important for the Enterprise millions of dollars every year. So, of course they want to make sure that that investment is worthwhile for the organization.

At the same time again the budget on there or they had count isn't gonna grow so a system which can make sure that that investment is worth while and there are no incidents and you know, when you need the the footage or we need the access control working all that. It really actually is working in real time. So that's when the system comes into play and is really helpful helpful with kind of really, you know, extending kind of the capabilities of the existing team with all the capabilities it provides.

Excellent. Well, we're almost at the time for people who maybe who want to get more information on simple things. Can you give us the website and spell it if you can.

So it's a www security things calm. com. com.

Yep, I want you to stop because you know, we pronounce it secure things calm but especially here in the US. You know, we would tend to emphasize that eye security or secure eye things that you are. You're absolutely right Allen.

Yeah, I want to make sure people get it anyway, right? Congratulations on the round. Keep up the great work come back and keep us posted here on what's going on and we'll speak to you soon.

Saying it sounds good. Thanks little island. Have a good one.

Thank you. We're gonna take a break and we'll be right back.