Stuart Bladen, Chief Executive Officer of Falanx LON:FLX, commented: “The launch today of MidGARD service is a huge milestone for Falanx. We are delighted the platform has been completed on schedule and we are extremely excited. This disruptive technology allows Falanx to redefine how cyber threats are detected and dealt with. It will be crucial in helping a wide range of companies and SMEs meet the expectations of the General Data Protection Requirement (GDPR) and their audit and governance needs. And this week, we are delighted to welcome Richard Morrell to the team from Gartner to help lead this new era in Falanx Cyber Technologies. We expect MidGARD to be very well received and to help deliver substantial additional subscription revenues to the Group.”
Falanx (AIM:FLX), the global intelligence, security, and cyber provider, is pleased to announce that is has today officially launched its proprietary Advanced Threat Detection and Response Platform, known as MidGARD.
What is MidGARD?
MidGARD replaces core competencies of SOC and SIEM using the latest data analytics & machine learning.
MidGARD is a leading-edge cyber threat detection and response platform. MidGARD replaces existing Security Operations Centres (SOCs) and security information and event management (SIEM) software with a multi-client cybersecurity ecosystem that processes the increasing accumulation of event and log data – millions of events per second – by using mass real-time stream processing. It uses the latest big data and machine learning tools to review a maelstrom of potentially informative data to identify the latest cyber threats.
How does MidGARD work?
MidGARD is a ‘Hive Mind’ for Security – a bot-net for the good guys.
MidGARD is designed for rapid deployment inside clients where it listens to the ever-growing data on customer networks to identify and react to threats. MidGARD identifies potential threats and highlights them to our fully manned UK Security Operations Centre (“SOC”) for ratification and triage. There are versions for both large institutions (MidGARD Enterprise) and SME (MicroSOC). Each MidGARD installation is semi-autonomous, but the real magic happens where they connect with AsGARD, a unique solution that brings all MidGARD deployments together. They form a hive mind, sharing events, learning from each other and recognising threats across many clients. The more clients, the better because when one client finds a problem, we can help everybody heal the breach.
MidGARD Disrupts
MidGARD replaces traditional SOCS and SIEMS. This saves implementation time, significant capital expenditure, staff running costs, and delivers joint learning to you from every other MidGARD client.
Organisations face an increasing curve of reputation damage from breaches. IT departments are challenged by enhanced threat levels and on how to staff up and retain qualified experienced security staffers. Basic industry points-based certification is now no longer enough. For organisations who can afford to build a SOC or to work with a third party to outsource their own SOC, there is no guarantee that this is sufficient to deal with a breach in real time. For many, building a SOC and full back up is simply unaffordable.
MidGARD brings a full SOC and SIEM service – and a significantly improved shared learning and cyber response capability – not just to large enterprise organisations but to SME’s alike, with enterprise-scale functionality safeguarding your estate for a fraction of what it would cost to have a dedicated or multi-tenanted SOC. With MidGARD, you pay for what you use and have the flexibility to grow.
Is MidGARD hardware, software, product, implementation or managed service?
MidGARD replaces all of these with an integrated ecosystem.
Depending on a client’s requirements, they may outsource their threat detection and response entirely to Falanx or they may use MidGARD with their own staff. Where client already have a SOC or staff, they can use MidGARD to access the latest tools; and have seamless access to Falanx SOC, support, incident response, 24×7 coverage, backup, and recovery facilities. Our unique approach to development means MidGARD is a toolset and experience built by security specialists for security specialists. It is not a monolithic application, developed in isolation. Rather, It is a complete toolset for managing security incidents, in house, as a service, as back up and resilience or in any combination you may need.
How is MidGARD Built:
We use the latest open source technology, together with proprietary processes and IP.
We built a completely new threat response system in less than a year, because we built on the shoulders of giants. We use the same database as Facebook, the same elastic search as Amazon, and parallel processing from Twitter. The platforms were forged in the fires of the Open Source community and engineered and tailored by our security engineering team. Our platform even has, as a small component, the open source code for a major SIEM. Our task, our unique IP is to work these together, to design the data and process flows for MidGARD. The result has been acceleration, scalability, reduced cost, and access to the latest data tools. Together they have created the MidGARD hive mind.
Scaling MidGARD quickly:
MidGARD is designed for rapid deployment, scalability, and for sale direct or through channel partners.
MidGARD can be deployed as fast as we can ship MidGARD sensors. They have encrypted links to the Hive Mind. Called AsGARD, the hive mind is highly scalable and hosted in a global datacentre. The value of MidGARD lies not only in its technology but in its clients, so we have assembled an impressive set of channel partners to grow the ecosystem quickly.
The full MidGARD service is being launched from today to 15 September 2017 at the UK’s leading Cyber Security Conference, 44CON 2017 [www.44con.com] at the ILEC Conference Centre, Earls Court, London [www.ilecconferencecentre.co.uk].
Jay Abbott, Executive Director of Falanx Cyber Defence, commented:
“I have been developing the concepts behind MidGARD for a long time, in response to the costs, issues and difficulties I have observed in my clients over many years. MidGARD is redefining hugely important assumptions about how SIEM and monitoring should be done. MidGARD has been brought to life this year through the expertise, commitment and excellence of the core team that I have recruited to support me at Falanx. These experts help to set us apart from the competition – we are in an industry where the smartest and the fastest win. Today, I believe, marks a decisive change Managed Detection and Response.”
