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Fidelis Cybersecurity provides proactive defense-in-depth and cyber defense solutions for enterprises and governmental agencies to secure their assets and sensitive data against various security threats including ransomware. The company's enterprise cybersecurity encompasses protection against threats on the networks, endpoints, user identities, and cloud assets. Fidelis Elevate® is an Active XDR solution that uniquely combines deception with detection and response across networks, endpoints, and cloud to form a holistic solution for finding and stopping threats before they can make an impact. Fidelis Cloud Passage Halo® provides unified and automated cloud security and compliance.Together, these security platforms help customers to know about the current happenings in the environment and what could also happen, possibly exploring how to fix the issue and prevent it in the future.
Anubhav Arora is the Chief Technology Officer at Fidelis Cybersecurity. He began his journey with a Ph.D. in networking technology, specializing in switching and routing. In his early jobs at Lucent and Tellabs, Anubhav worked on telecom products. This work paved a path towards Fidelis Cybersecurity, where he played a pivotal role in developing Fidelis Network, which helps detect various stages of threats on networks, and, eventually,the Active XDR platform. When he joined, Fidelis was a start-up with cutting-edge technology that combines the content and context of network transmissions to stop data leakage on the network. Anubhav, along with the team, made many strides including several patented engineering innovations, which made him a significant player in the NDR space. "To secure our customers holistically across multi-cloud and hybrid environments, we both innovated and acquired and integrated companies for Endpoint security, Deception and Cloud security. We call it Active XDR", he adds.
In his role at Fidelis, Anubhav understands how elements of XDR come together including architecture, integrations, and user experience. He leads and challenges his team to continue to innovate ahead of the curve and better protect enterprises against an ever-changing threat landscape. Anubhav is responsible for the technology, product vision and architecture of the company's cybersecurity solutions and works with his CISO to ensure the security of the company, its products, and cloud services.
Anubhav believes that cybersecurity is a broad and complex set of problems rife with incomplete and hard-to-use solutions. His goal is to help enable stack consolidation and deliver robust, holistic platform to make the security teams more efficient and effective. He says that his experiences taught him how vital it is to embrace the full breadth and complexity of the problem, break it down into tractable components, and to weave them together to create effective solutions while maintaining operational simplicity. It has always been a priority for Anubhav to connect with his customers to listen to their first-hand challenges in securing their enterprises and to connect with various teams in Fidelis Cybersecurity, hearing their challenges and creating better solutions. Anubhav engages with colleagues, customers, experts in the field to help them in understanding and learning the broader scope of the technologies used. He trusts the ability to deep dive when needed and emphasises the concept of 'connecting the dots' in leading innovation and designing cutting-edge products. Instituting a disciplined approach to product development and believing in the cause for creating a secure world, are the two key elements that shaped his journey.
In the ever-changing proliferation of technology, Anubhav notes that the CTOs should be able to formulate long-term technology vision for the organization as well as create shorter-term roadmap, actionable goals, and priorities. He stresses on being flexible and able to think around roadblocks. Anubhav believes, "some technologists dive deep into singular aspects and become subject matter experts. Some are good at understanding how systems all work together to create larger solutions. A CTO needs to be able to delve at both levels appropriately: to go into depth when needed to resolve complex and critical roadblocks and to step back to look at the breadth of the solution when thinking strategically. It is also important to understand how research in one field may apply to another."
Creating an environment that fosters openness and collaboration within teams to bring out new ideas and innovate
Building a culture of cross-functional collaboration
Utilizing the skill set of individuals to bring out their best work, and
Inspiring them to believe in the cause, the solutions, and the company as a whole
Anubhav argues that effective solutions require studying the problem in detail, as well as understanding the operational use of the solution when deployed. In the case of cybersecurity, several users and stakeholders depend on the solution. He firstly strives to build a great understanding of the problem in his team, and allows his team to attack the problem in unique ways by providing a space for new ideas and innovative solutions to flow in. He adds that Fidelis not only focuses on solving particular technical problems, but also strives to make usability and operational simplicity for its customers in the forefront. Working with customers and internal teams to identify the various user personas for each solution and understanding their roles and challenges is a vital part in the product development process. He highlights that this engagement and mindset in his teams helps in innovating and creating solutions that appeal to various stakeholders in the customer's deployments.
Technologies such as AI, IoT, Automation, Cloud, and Robotics are disruptive in every sphere, including in everybody's personal lives, and cybersecurity is no exception says Anubhav. These are the tools that can enable solutions for exceptionally hard algorithmic problems. On the other hand, AI/ML has also helped create new attack vectors and added another level of the cybersecurity challenges. Due to the wide impact of these, he believes every leader in this space today needs to understand, at least at a basic level, how these technologies work, how they can be applied effectively, and how they are maturing with time. Anubhav believes this understanding to be extremely important in building a team to ensure the right talents and skill sets, which help in choosing the right infrastructure and environment for the continuous development of the team.
Threat actors are usually one step ahead defenders. They pivot their tactics constantly. Fidelis Cybersecurity internalizes the mantra of 'Assume Breach' under Anubhav's guidance. To conquer the challenge, he and his team approaches security innovation with a goal of staying proactive in detecting the adversary and responding to the threat before they can inflict damage.
One of the personal challenges that Anubhav faced in his career, is realizing the need to proactively connect and network with industry peers and experts in related fields. He says that this wasn't something that came naturally to him as he was an introvert by nature. So, he actively worked on building this skill through conscious effort and guidance from his mentors.
As technology has proliferated in every aspect of human lives, so have concerns for security and privacy. Anubhav understands that cyber attackers can hide easily, remain anonymous and prey on others for information and money. Digitization and other technology changes are only accelerating, and each introduces new security problems by providing attackers new ways to exploit the technology. For instance, he says to consider the impact of ransomware attacks in the last year or so on everybody's lives. "The industry needs to lead with initiatives to instil a security-first mindset for new tech, and regulatory bodies need to catch up to times so digital rights of individuals and organizations are primary objectives," says Anubhav.
While talking specifically about the threat detection and response realm of cybersecurity, Anubhav sees this problem to expand with new attack surfaces coming in and novel attack techniques being used. He takes pride in mentioning that Fidelis is at the forefront of these changes to innovate, apply new algorithms, solutions, adopting new frameworks and inter-operating in the ecosystem by enabling cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions now and in the future.
Anubhav advises that emerging CTOs remain humble, curious, open. They need to cultivate their ability to deep dive when needed while building their knowledge of the innovations and technologies. "Always actively listen and learn. Start with respecting, understanding, and taking care of people – your people are the ones who innovate to create and build great technology. Couple this with disciplined internal processes, clear responsibility and accountability, interactions across different teams, engagement with customers, and it will result in superior products and solutions for everyone," concludes Anubhav.
