Contributed Article
Serkan Akcan, Chief Executive Officer, SecHard
SecHard is a cybersecurity software company founded by a constellation of stars and tech gurus. Its story highlights the power of collaboration.
It all began with our CTO, Kadir, a seasoned IT and cybersecurity manager, returning to the academic world for his master’s degree. During his education, he compared his experience with literature reviews and saw the potential for a product that could centralize cybersecurity hardening for different IT products. In 2019, Kadir and his childhood friend, who is now our Chief Software Development Officer, Cihat, developed a prototype. Cihat’s exceptional coding skills are at the core of SecHard’s quality. In 2020, they brought the prototype software to my cybersecurity services company, where I serve as CEO. I’ve been working in the cybersecurity field since 2000 and co-founded a cybersecurity services company in 2005. With this uncommon wealth of experience in cybersecurity, we have a vision for the future.
After seeing SecHard’s prototype, we envisioned that by analysing its shortcomings, we could create a roadmap to address cybersecurity issues worldwide and directly impact cyber resilience. We invested in the prototype software and transformed it into a Cybersecurity Robotic Process Automation product. Our primary goal was to eliminate human-based delays or errors while making cybersecurity improvements through automation and reducing skill and talent shortage gaps. However, we didn’t want to rely solely on our own insights and experiences.
The success of a tech company is directly proportional to the productivity of its employees. In other words, a software company’s most valuable asset is its human resources. Therefore, we endeavoured to bring the best developers and directors to our team. We brought in Ömer, who had held top-level cybersecurity management positions in major companies, as our VP of Product. We appointed Caner, another cybersecurity guru, as Chief Business Officer. Thus, SecHard became a team of stars, and the quality of its products reflects that.
What is your USP?
SecHard is the industry’s first cybersecurity robotic process automation tool. According to sources like Gartner and IBM, 95% of cybersecurity incidents are preventable with known and recommended security controls. Many hacking stories trace back to inadequately performed cybersecurity tasks. These tasks are routine and repetitive, making them ideal candidates for robotic process automation. Basically, we can automate the following tasks sequentially:
– Automatic discovery of cyber assets
– Automated provisioning of access to discovered assets
– Automatic cybersecurity gap analysis and risk scoring for accessed assets
– Automatic configuration enforcement to bring non-compliant assets in line with cybersecurity policies
– Alerting relevant teams about high-risk assets that cannot be enforced for any reason
This is just a brief overview. Today, SecHard supports more than 110 IT products, including servers, clients, network devices, databases, web servers, and cloud systems. We fully automate audits and improvements required by CIS Benchmark, DISA STIG, NIST, and some local security standards. We can reduce the need for cybersecurity experts to one in five.
How have you got to your current stage of development?
Today, we have more than 40 customers from diverse sectors such as telecom, finance and banking, manufacturing, energy, logistics, retail, and government, as cybersecurity is a universal challenge. We want to take this game-changing product and our expertise to global markets. We participated in the InnogateUK program, an accelerator program at Istanbul Technical University, where we received in-depth training. Over the past year, we sponsored various conferences in London, Dubai, and Azerbaijan. In the next 6 months, we will attend conferences in London, Munich, Dubai, Riyadh, and Texas. In the next two years, we aim to become a cybersecurity provider with a presence on five continents.
Managed by a technically competent and experienced team, SecHard is also a well-managed company from a commercial perspective. In a very short time, we have made SecHard a profitable company that can finance all its investments, including marketing and go-to-market, from its own budget. This does not mean that we are closed to investors. We are in discussions with investors who will bring more than just money to SecHard, accelerate our entry into global markets, and continue to seek the right investors in return.
What does the future hold for your SecHard?
SecHard is set to become a prominent cybersecurity manufacturer alongside the world’s leading cybersecurity companies, operating on five continents and automating cybersecurity problem-solving for organisations.
Want to learn more about SecHard? Find them at Stand S6 at this year’s Connected Britain, in London on 20-21 September.
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