Story & photo by Oliver Samson / Correspondent
PANDORA IT Security Inc., an upstart information-technology (IT) security company run by young Filipinos, is eyeing to launch in 2016 a software that would test security solutions’ capability to safeguard data.
Pandora CEO Isaac Sabas, 28, said they began developing the solution called Active Probe. It’s approaching completion, Sabas told the BusinessMirror.
According to Sabas, the solution promises to facilitate organizations determine vulnerability of their existing data security tools.
“Offensive security is one of the three IT security domains,” Sabas explained. He cited the other two as defensive security and administrative security.
“The Active Probe is about 80-percent complete. Initially dedicated to e-commerce, we are planning to launch next year.”
Pandora would continue to embody innovation, he said. It is dedicated to development of new IT security solutions that are 100-percent Filipino.
“[We are also] making a statement that we Filipinos are capable,” Sabas said. “The country has a rich resource of young people who are very talented. Despite this, they remain copycats in terms of IT security because they lack confidence and exposure.”
Sabas’s cofounders were his own students at De La Salle University Manila, where they conceptualized together a few years ago what would be incorporated as Pandora in 2013.
“I grouped them slowly starting when they were freshmen,” he said. The youngest is 21 years old today.
Like Sabas, his cofounders are graduates of computer science with specialization in network engineering.
Everyone has at least 12 units in IT security, according to Sabas.
Pandora also seeks to educate the market on the balance of product and operation, which is paramount in data security, he said.
Active Probe would be only one of Pandora’s homegrown security solutions that are at par with their global counterparts.
In 2014, Pandora introduced the Threat Scout, a security information and event manager (Siem) that collects logs from mobile phone, computer, router, server and other devices connected to a network and reports breach.
In October, Pandora announced the WebRanger, the company’s second security software.
Binding a Web application firewall, the Threat Scout itself is a Siem and a security operations center. The WebRanger intercepts, analyzes and blocks incoming threats.
Pandora is the only IT security company in the Philippines, and arguably in Southeast Asia, that offers solutions and the technical expertise required to operate them.
It competes against bigger and known players who sell security tools the way car manufacturers do, Sabas said. After purchasing, the buyer has to learn to drive and maintain the car himself.
Unlike its competitors, Pandora not only offers security solutions but the technical expertise required to operate the software.
“Security is not just the product,” he said. “It is both the product and the operation.”
Pandora offers security solution in package together with the technical manpower that clients can tap to take charge of data security.
No security software, however sophisticated, can effectively secure data unless a technically competent team monitors threats 24/7 and responds quickly to fix problem, Sabas said.
He holds the growing data threats in the country responsible for the development of security outsourcing industry, relieving companies of the painstaking charge of employing in-house IT security people.
“It’s better to outsource security since it is not their core competency,” he said.
Security, Sabas noted, should not be expensive nor tangled.
Pandora is also eyeing to introduce its homegrown security softwares and expertise in Singapore, Australia and Canada next year.
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Image credits: Photo courtesy of Pandora IT Security Inc.