Anuj Goel, CEO and Co-founder of Cyware, discusses the key elements of transforming SecOps, the role of automation in threat detection, emerging cybersecurity trends, and more in this insightful Q&A.
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Hi Anuj, please share your key learnings from your journey as a tech CEO and CEO of Cyware.
A key learning is that the people—our team, our customers, and our partners—drive success. A strong, cohesive team with a shared vision has been essential in building and delivering transformative solutions to our customers.
Additionally, we’ve seen how cybersecurity challenges are growing increasingly complex, and the traditional reactive approach isn’t enough. To measurably improve a defensive strategy, organizations need a more effective way to consume, enrich, and act on critical cyber threat intelligence. We’ve focused on developing solutions that break down data, technology, and team level silos that hinder efficient security operations, emphasizing intelligence-driven automation and bidirectional threat sharing solutions.
Ultimately, the way the industry has traditionally addressed security is not keeping pace with the adversary, and as a CEO, it’s my job to enable Cyware’s talent to develop more effective solutions that keep organizations secure.
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Cyware’s Cyber Fusion solution is unique. Could you explain the core components and how they transform security operations?
Cyware’s virtual Cyber Fusion solution integrates AI, threat intelligence, low-code / no-code security automation, and security collaboration technologies to create a more unified approach to intelligence-driven security operations and response. Traditional security operations have struggled with silos and fragmented workflows. Our platform breaks those barriers by bringing together disparate tools and teams—threat intelligence, SOC, incident response, and more—into one cohesive system.
This combination of capabilities powered by AI-enabled decision-making and actioning, enables organizations to move from being reactive to proactive, so they can better anticipate, defend, and respond to threats in real time. The result is a more streamlined, efficient security process that improves how businesses defend themselves.
How does improving threat intelligence sharing, and breaking down silos essential in today’s cybersecurity landscape?
Silos in security operations create blind spots. When teams or systems aren’t communicating effectively, critical cyber threat intelligence can be delayed or lost altogether, leading to slower responses and missed opportunities to mitigate threats. By breaking down these silos and enabling threat intelligence operationalization across the ecosystem of deployed endpoint, cloud, network, and IT tools along with enabling intelligence sharing across departments and even between trusted organizations, you improve security posture. Threat intelligence needs to be actionable and timely.
The more freely threat intelligence is shared and gets operationalized across the ecosystem, the quicker teams can detect threats, understand their impact, and take appropriate action. In today’s threat landscape where adversaries work together, a collective defense approach is crucial because speed and collaboration can make all the difference.
What role does automation play in threat detection and response, and how does it improve security team efficiency?
There is simply too much data and information for analysts to process manually. Automation is now table stakes. It plays a crucial role in threat detection and response by reducing the manual burden on security teams, enabling faster, more accurate decision-making. With automation, tasks like analyzing and enriching alerts, correlating threat data, and triggering automated response actions can be handled in seconds, not minutes or hours. This frees up analysts to focus on more strategic work based on context-rich insights.
In addition, automation ensures consistency, helping teams maintain a high standard of security across their operations.
Analyst burnout from repetitive tasks is a critical issue. How does Cyware help overcome this challenge?
Analyst burnout is a very real challenge that we address by embedding automation and intelligence augmentation into our platform. By automating the repetitive, low-level tasks that analysts traditionally handle—such as triaging alerts, gathering threat data, and managing playbooks—we enable them to focus on more impactful, higher-level analysis. This not only reduces burnout but also keeps your most valuable security assets—your people—engaged and motivated. Additionally, our platform integrates AI to assist in decision-making, further alleviating the mental load on analysts. The result is a more balanced workload and improved job satisfaction for security teams.
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AI and machine learning will transform the way companies approach cybersecurity in the coming years. Do you agree with this statement? If so, could you explain why?
Absolutely. AI and machine learning are fundamentally reshaping how organizations manage cybersecurity, and their influence will only expand. These technologies enable us to automate complex decision-making processes, analyze vast datasets in real time, and detect even the most subtle threats that would be missed by traditional methods. By identifying patterns and anomalies as they occur, AI ensures a faster, more precise response to emerging threats.
What makes AI truly transformative is its ability to orchestrate and automate security workflows across different teams and systems. As cybersecurity becomes more intricate, AI-driven systems can act as a central hub, coordinating actions and decisions, and ensuring that every component of the security infrastructure operates in harmony. Machine learning models continuously evolve, learning from new threat data to stay ahead of attackers who are constantly adapting their tactics.
In the coming years, organizations will increasingly rely on AI to operationalize threat intelligence and enhance security operations. This will not only reduce the burden on human analysts but also ensure that defenses are dynamic and scalable. AI-driven automation will be crucial for enabling proactive security measures, where threats are anticipated and mitigated before they cause significant damage.
Before we close, share five key cybersecurity trends and challenges that enterprises must focus on to strengthen their security postures.
1. Threat Intelligence Operationalization
In today’s landscape, security teams recognize the pivotal role that threat intelligence plays in strengthening security operations. With intelligence accessible from a wide array of sources, it is crucial to aggregate and contextualize this data to focus on relevant threats. By operationalizing threat intelligence at machine speed, organizations can proactively mitigate risks, enabling faster and more precise responses to evolving threats, and ensuring their defenses remain ahead of potential attacks.
2. Automation and Orchestration:
The increasing number of cyber threats means manual security processes simply cannot keep up. Automation and orchestration are critical to handle routine tasks like alert triaging, incident response, threat intelligence analysis, threat hunting, and vulnerability management. By leveraging automation, enterprises can not only improve efficiency but also ensure consistency in their security operations.
3. AI Integration:
The adoption of AI in cybersecurity is accelerating. These technologies are essential for detecting unknown threats, analyzing massive datasets, and automating complex decision-making processes. Enterprises that embrace AI-driven security will be better positioned to anticipate and neutralize advanced cyber threats before they cause damage.
4. Modernizing Security Operations:
Traditional security operations are siloed and reactive, often leading to missed threats or slow responses. Virtual cyber fusion centers address this by unifying threat intelligence, SOC operations, and incident response teams within a single platform. This approach breaks down silos and enables organizations to detect and respond to threats faster and more efficiently. The fusion model fosters collaboration, streamlines security workflows, and enhances situational awareness across the entire organization.
5. Collective Defense:
As cyber threats become more sophisticated and widespread, no single organization can defend itself alone. Collective defense—where organizations collaborate to share threat intelligence, defensive strategies, and security insights—has become vital to outpacing the adversary. By participating in collective defense efforts, enterprises can stay ahead of emerging threats and benefit from the combined strength of a broader security ecosystem.
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Anuj Goel, Ph.D. is CEO and co-founder of Cyware, a cybersecurity platform with a mission of enhancing cyber awareness and real-time sharing of intelligence and incidents to enable proactive identification and mitigation of threats. Previously, Anuj worked at Citigroup in New York as the head of global strategy and planning covering information security and anti-money laundering. Anuj is a Senior Member of the IEEE and has served as an executive committee member of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC). He holds a doctoral degree in Engineering and has earned several globally recognized cybersecurity certifications.
Cyware delivers an innovative approach to cybersecurity that unifies threat intelligence, automation, threat response, and vulnerability management with data insights gleaned from assets, users, malware, attackers, and vulnerabilities. Cyware’s Cyber Fusion platform integrates SOAR and TIP technology, enabling collaboration across siloed security teams. Cyware is widely deployed by enterprises, government agencies, and MSSPs, and is the leading threat-intelligence sharing platform for global ISACs and CERTs.
