Many business executives have been affected by cybercrimes, but very few take the initiative to build an effective solution from scratch to combat these rapidly increasing cyber-attacks. Chandra Pandey is the exception. In 2014 he founded Seceon, which provides a comprehensive cybersecurity platform, after having been personally affected by a data breach that resulted in the loss of private identity and credit card information. He serves as CEO of the company. Along with Seceon’s cofounders, Chandra had realized that conventional perimeter, an overlay of silo solutions and half-measure behavioral cybersecurity approaches were incapable of protecting enterprises from inevitable attacks. This motivated them to build a cutting-edge platform that would enable businesses to proactively detect and stop threats in real-time, instead of hours, days or weeks later.
As head of Seceon, Chandra fosters innovation by empowering all team members with decision-making capacities, advocating open and respectful communications, and building a culture of continuous improvement. He works closely with customers to define and address their cybersecurity problems for the digital era so that they can focus on growing their own business.
A Fully-Automated Platform
At the very beginning, Chandra realized that in order to help the industry, Seceon would not only need to develop the best possible cybersecurity platform, but also solutions that work instantly out-of-the- box and are affordable for even small businesses (SMBs). As SMBs don’t have the expertise or resources to stop attacks, they are increasingly targeted by cyber criminals. Moreover, two-thirds of them go out of business should they be breached.
Seceon created its Open Threat Management (OTM) Platform as the industry’s first fully-automated platform. It offers real-time, comprehensive visibility and proactive threat detection, containment and elimination for all threats categories, including malware, ransomware, spyware, botnet, compromised credentials, insider threats, denial of services for applications and protocols, vulnerability exploits for web/emails/OS applications, data breaches and exfiltration, IT mistakes, IDS and network behaviors.
The company offers two solutions based on the OTM Platform that make it easy for organizations to benefit from its technology. One is Seceon aiSIEM™, which goes beyond traditional SIEM and eliminates the need for adding multiple silo solutions. It ingests raw streaming data from applications, identity systems, flows, and raw traffic from networks to provide comprehensive visibility, real-time proactive threat detection, automated threat containment and elimination, continuous compliance, and policy management and reporting. The other solution is Seceon aiMSSP™, which enables Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) to offer outsourced security services to SMBs, including 24×7 security monitoring, threat intelligence, and real-time detection and remediation, at nominal and predictable linear costs.
Changing the “Impossibility” Mindset
Chandra was fortunate to have multiple opportunities during his career to take initiative in large companies to build new products from the ground up. They were startups of their own with specific, aggressive goals and timelines. His teams were always able to deliver because they had a purpose. In fact, Chandra says he has not found a single person who does not want to achieve a meaningful goal. He considers himself lucky to be part of many teams over the years—including Seceon—that delivered what many people thought was impossible.
Chandra and his Seceon co-founders decided to go for a comprehensive cybersecurity platform from day one. Many people had advised them to include certain features that would make Seceon attractive to strategic buyers. But Seceon believed that would get in the way of solving the tough cybersecurity issues companies have been struggling with for the last two decades. Today, when Chandra and other co-founders discuss their platform, the first reaction they get from enterprises is “it is impossible.” But what Seceon delivers is not impossible; it’s just surprising. Seceon’s team is all about enabling “Cybersecurity Done Right” each and every day.
Unblocking Barriers
Chandra recalls that as a 100% channel-driven company, Seceon had challenges due to its partners’ processes and approvals requiring longer cycles to close customer deals. Over time, he learned to identify partners who are equally vested in Seceon’s goals and motivated to quickly achieve them.
As a self-funded startup outside of the Silicon Valley and VC universes, Chandra was also challenged in generating visibility and credibility for Seceon’s unique approach. However, once businesses try the OTM Platform, their response is overwhelming and instantly positive as the platform is easy to deploy and manage, and incredibly effective at accurately detecting and stopping threats in minutes, with minimal human intervention or performance impact.
Delivering on Vision
Chandra asserts that Seceon will continue to be laser-focused on eliminating cyber threats by adding innovations to its aiSIEM and aiMSSP “Comprehensive Cybersecurity for Digital-Era” solutions. It will continue to expand its list of top-tier partners as it targets and wins customers around the globe. Seceon’s culture will help the company continue to spur innovation as it moves forward. Its culture is based on a strong passion to deliver on Seceon’s vision, mutual respect for peers, and an insatiable appetite to intelligently solve the digital era’s most urgent cybersecurity challenges.
The Essence of Leadership
According to Chandra, CEOs must have the ability to listen, create a vision for and inspire employees, learn something new each and every day, remain optimistic, and think outside of the box. He believes that every member of an organization has valuable insights that can help to improve their company. He says a CEO needs to keep open channels of communication with employees, and make the time and effort to listen to perspectives other than his or her own. An individual needs to learn from each and every decision one makes in order to constantly improve. And despite mistakes, a CEO must remain positive and focused on the potential of the company.
In Chandra’s opinion, there are so many ways to improve business and industry that have not yet been discovered or tried, and it is the job of the CEO to be willing to try new things and make new discoveries. He advises upcoming entrepreneurs to remain proactive, listen to the world around them, envision the future, and passionately believe in it. He firmly believes that it takes a team to build a successful company, and therefore recommends emerging leaders treat employees with respect and empower them to innovate.
Source: The 30 Most Innovative CEOs to Watch in 2018
