During a crisis, there is almost always someone looking to profit out of the confusion and uncertainty it causes. And amid the global pandemic, cybercrime has been on the rise.
With companies looking to protect themselves while balancing the financial impact of Covid-19, Dallas-based cybersecurity startup Zartech has received certification as a historically underutilized business by the State of Texas – a designation to help promote minority-owned businesses – as it expands its technology to new markets.
“When the internet was first built… the founders didn’t envision where it would end up today. The bad guys are going to be taking advantage of it all the time,” Zartech CEO and founder Abu Sadeq told NTX Inno. “Having been a practitioner and living it day in and day out, I felt the need for a tool that can look at an organization from a very high level and do an assessment of the organization to understand where some of the gaps are.”
Bootstrapped with $500,000 from Sadeq and others since its launch in 2016, Zartech’s nearly 10-person team has developed a cloud-based cybersecurity solution for businesses of any industry or size. Like a hacker looking for vulnerabilities in an organization, the company provides what it calls a “holistic approach” to cybersecurity. Through its software, Zartech conducts a risk assessment of a company’s digital protection, as well as the training it provides its employees and the processes through which it handles potential risks.
Among its clients are local companies like GameStop and OutMatch, as well as public organizations like the Denton County Transportation Authority. For one of its clients, Zartech even conducts phishing exercises throughout the year.
“The mistake we see is [businesses are] spending their security budget mostly on buying a shiny object, where we see that if they spend more time into training, into their employees… and also putting a good governance process in place, they will get a better bang for their money and they’ll be better protected,” Sadeq said. “If you look to most of the breaches that happen, it’s not actually a technology problem, mainly it's due to the lack of people being trained or lack of a process.”
Sadeq said cyberattacks have been on the rise in the months since the pandemic was declared. And though hacking technology has become more advanced alongside the systems it looks to penetrate, the most common form of attack Zartech sees are phishing attacks, as the pandemic has created uncertainty, and with it vulnerability in the employees that are often targeted. Sadeq added that the most common targets are small- and mid sized businesses, which often don’t have the cybersecurity resources that larger companies do. Due to their size, this can often have devastating consequences for the smaller businesses, especially as Sadeq said the amount of money lost through cyberattacks increases annually.
Since the pandemic has created financial uncertainty for many businesses, Zartech has had to look for new flows of revenue. Sadeq said the HUB designation will help it do that. Towards the end of year, the Department of Defense mandated that its more than 360,000 contractors would need to have a cybersecurity certification, ranging from levels 1 to 5 (lowest to highest), based on the types of information that handle. Sadeq said like Lockheed Martin would be an example of a level 5, though most would likely need at least a level 3 certification.
“We feel like this is going to be a game changer for us because of the amount of DoD contractors that would have to certify in such a short time,” Sadeq said.
As part of the defense contracting process, contractors are required to utilize a certain amount of women-owned and minority-owned businesses, among other categories. The HUB designation for Zartech will allow it access to more opportunities. Sadeq said that to accommodate, Zartech has rolled out a new module that allows DoD contractors to conduct an audit of their entire cybersecurity system within a few weeks, which the company can then take to the government for verification and certification.
“I tell my clients, if you are connecting your network or your computer or your server to the internet, you are vulnerable to having a cyberattack. No matter what the size [of the company] is, everyone is vulnerable,” Sadeq said.
