Deep learning cybersecurity provider Deep Instinct launches Australian operations

Israel-based Deep Instinct has brought its deep learning-equipped cybersecurity offering to Australia, as part of its expansion into the Asia-Pacific region.

“Cybersecurity threats remain one of the biggest challenges for the enterprise,” Deep Instinct senior vice president for Asia-Pacific Stuart Fisher said.

“They’re becoming more frequent and intelligent, and organisations are engaged in an arms race to protect themselves.”

The technology uses a proprietary neural network, which the company said draws inspiration from the human brain’s ability to learn, to scan datasets and accurately protect against threats.

Deep Instinct said its neural network had previously blocked attacks such as Spora, WannaCry, NotPetya and Badrabbit, without input from a human security operations centre and before the malware had any impact on customers.

The firm said the technology operated in parallel with legacy systems, augmenting existing infrastructure and investments, so customers won’t need to “rip out and replace” their existing operations.

“Every enterprise has a responsibility to protect data. It’s become an operational imperative that CISOs today deploy the most advanced, predictive AI algorithms for autonomous cyber protection,” Fisher said.

“While new data regulations won’t solve the CISO’s challenge, they will make organisations more accountable and encourage the evaluation of superior AI solutions that are far more predictive, with a greater level of autonomous operation and minimal human intervention — and that’s where Deep Instinct excels.”

Fisher told CRN the solution was in a low-footprint 50MB file that only required one update per year, and can adapt to a new environment after “learning” for just one day.

“The only time our solution didn’t work was in Japan, but after one day of learning about Japanese malware it was able to perform its task with minimal errors,” he said.

The network’s backbone is composed of graphics processing units (GPUs) developed by Nvidia, one of the company’s major investors, which Fisher said could carry out its deep learning tasks significantly faster than central processing units (CPUs).

“The GPUs Nvidia developed took deep learning out of academia, which used CPUs and took months to complete tasks,” Fisher said.

“The GPUs can perform the tasks in only one day, and Deep Instinct would be the first to implement it in cybersecurity.”

Fisher previously served as Sophos Asia-Pacific’s managing director and joins fellow Sophos veteran Justin Peters, Deep Instinct’s senior director for sales engineering and professional services for Asia-Pacific and Japan.

Deep Instinct is currently looking to bring on some Australian partners and is focused on the banking, financial services and insurance sectors, as well as in manufacturing and education.

“We provide the most advanced cybersecurity protection available to help enterprises protect their data, their brand and their profit,” Fisher said.

“This gives them the confidence to innovate with new and emerging technologies that drive revenue growth, because they know their security is robust enough to detect and block any new threats.”