LUCY: Securing Enterprises with Technology Driven Test and Awareness

The world is governed by technology and it has become quite evident that businesses which fail to survive this notion lag behind in the competition. One of the major reasons for the failure of an enterprise could be failing to mitigate external risks. With the evolution of disruptive technologies, cyber-threats have also emerged considerably. Enterprises that deal in IT and cyber security can be considered as a bane in the current era. LUCY is one such company that ensures organizations' IT security and maintains cyber security awareness, or tests IT defenses. The company's tools process a variety of campaigns including phishing simulations, awareness trainings, technology assessments, malware simulations, or simulated ransomware attacks. Analytics Insight spoke to Oliver Muenchow, Founder of LUCY Security to discover the company's concept and visualization of cybercrimes, malware infections and cybersecurity with the evolution of technology and innovation.

Analytics Insight: Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization and the services that your company offers.

Oliver Muenchow: As a product, LUCY evolved out of the understanding that a technical solution alone cannot solve the security problems and that employees are an important part of the company-wide security policy.

Lucy is a software that allows you to test your security and help it evolve against cyber threats on both the people side and the system side simultaneously. The software offers the ability to run phishing simulations, awareness trainings, technology assessments, malware simulations, or simulated ransomware attacks. Our customers include energy companies, financial services, government agencies, healthcare and manufacturing industries, as well as other global organizations.

Analytics Insight: With what mission, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

Oliver Muenchow: LUCY is the culmination of almost 20 years of experience in supporting companies in the field of IT security. The Swiss financial industry has been virtually attacked by cyber criminals since the beginning of the Internet. For this reason, we started offering penetration tests as early as 1998 to evaluate the IT infrastructure of the industry and recommended potential improvements.

The challenge for our first customers was that they did not want their employees' login data to be stored or transmitted over the Internet when simulating an attack. So only an on-premise version of such a test and training software became an option. However, such a software did not exist at that time, which is why we started developing LUCY. The tool quickly expanded from a software for attack simulations to the area of awareness training. Later, components such as technical security checks and the analysis of reported incidents through our mail plugin were added. In 2019, LUCY will also be enhanced by an "external view" of the risks with our darknet model, which provides an insight into the data darknet leaks.

Analytics Insight: Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognition and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

Oliver Muenchow: We won several awards since our start in 2015 and we were immediately named "Preferred Phishing Simulation" in Hacking for Dummies.

Analytics Insight: Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions towards the company and the industry.

Oliver Muenchow is the Founder of LUCY Security. He is performing security services since 1997. We developed many security tools before LUCY. Some tools are available as open source over GitHub, for example – https://github.com/swissfondue/gtta.

Analytics Insight: Tell us how is your company contributing to the cyber/cloud security industry of the nation.

Oliver Muenchow: As Lucy software is available for companies up to 500 users for free (https://lucysecurity.com/download), we make security awareness available and affordable for everyone.

Analytics Insight: What technologies/ tools/ practices your company uses to mitigate risks involving privacy, attacks and threats for its clients?

Oliver Muenchow: Companies must ensure that they're not just investing in technology, but are also creating a security-conscious workplace culture. The key to securing users and mitigate risks is to empower employees to realize that they're an important part of the company's cybersecurity plan and to show them what they can do to become an effective human firewall. This human firewall has three main components: employee education, minimizing human error and getting ahead of new threats. But the main objective of creating a human firewall is to raise the awareness of end users or employees to such an extent that they become a solid line of defense against attempts to compromise an organization's systems.

Analytics Insight: What makes company innovative? What are the key partnerships and involvements done to drive the innovation?

Oliver Muenchow: We combine attack simulation with on spot training, but also look at the technical aspects. To reduce the risk of malware in your environment, you also need safe and effective ways to test your systems. This is where LUCY's Malware Simulation Toolkit (LHFC) comes into play. LHFC is an advanced malware simulation suite capable of emulating various threat simulations equivalent to many of the tools employed by hackers. The metrics from the awareness training, phishing training, incident reports from users, technical analysis and also darknet scans are combined in one system, allowing the organization to get a better understand of the real risks.

Analytics Insight: How are disruptive technologies like Cloud Computing/ Big Data Analytics/Artificial Intelligence impacting today's innovation?

Oliver Muenchow: Absolutely. AI or big data analytics helps us process different data sources to get a better understanding of the risks.

Analytics Insight: Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced until now.

Oliver Muenchow: Our company is bootstrapped. This allows us to focus on product development and the stuff that appears important for us. The downside is that we have a limited marketing budget. Many clients do not know us.

Analytics Insight: How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?

Oliver Muenchow: We continue to grow with an average 100 % annual growth rate. So far, we educated more than 7 million users up to today. We hope to continue on this path.