N.B. Cybersecurity Startup Helps Companies Fend Off ‘Brute Force Attacks’
Chatting with David Shipley last week, I was curious to know how a guy goes from being a business journalist to CEO of an up-and-coming cybersecurity startup.
It happens when the guy works in-between the two for an organization that receives half a billion cyberattack attempts each week.
Shipley is the co-founder and CEO of Beauceron Security, a Fredericton company that measures clients’ cybersecurity risks. A former business reporter with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, he spent five years as the director of strategic initiatives of information technology services at the University of New Brunswick.
He was amazed at the attempts to hack the university’s IT system — 500 million attempts each week. He explained that many of these cybercriminals use Canadian universities as a beachhead for broader attacks in Canada.
They’re what’s known as brute force attacks and are the cyber equivalent of rattling the doorknob or trying a window,” said Shipley.
“They’re noisy, but the truly dangerous attacks are the malicious emails, and we saw an increase in those from 140,000 to more than 1.79 million between 2015 (and) 2016.”
Beauceron helps businesses and organizations protect themselves against this sort of attack — and, of course, more severe attacks. It’s an online product that helps organizations assess whether they have the right systems and culture to protect themselves. Named for a sheepdog from Northern France, it helps organizations make sure they’re not sheep in a world full of wolves.
Read more about this story in Entrevestor.