Deceptive Bytes: Delivering a World-Class Endpoint Cyber Defense Solution

As cyber security threats and data breaches become more prominent in recent years, enterprises know that it's not a question if they're going to get hit, it's a question of WHEN. By being aware of the risk of a successful attack, loss of reputation and potential fines (as inflicted by new regulations such as the GDPR in Europe), enterprises are in search of ways to actively seek and prevent cyber attacks and mitigate any loss or corruption of data. As new technologies emerge, a company which is on the front line in helping enterprises close the gap and prevent in real-time, unknown and sophisticated cyber attacks that are able to evade current security systems is Deceptive Bytes. The company offers its flagship Active Endpoint Deception solution which helps enterprises reduces risk, operational costs and burden.

Deceptive Bytes specializes in protecting enterprises' endpoints using active deception technology, offering a lightweight user-mode solution that enables system-wide protection with pinpoint handling through the entire Endpoint Kill-Chain. The solution helps in reducing risk, operational burden & costs and false positives while increasing prevention & detection rates, employees' productivity and the security confidence an enterprise requires. The company also offers a management console to orchestrate the solution's deployment, detection's forensic information, statistics and reports, configuration and much more, simplifying the work of the security professional who has to deal with many complex systems and their alerts/false positives.

The Foundation and Mission of Deceptive Bytes

The company was established when the founders sat together and thought as brothers that they should combine their knowledge and experience to build a company a few years ago. Back then, they didn't have any idea in mind just the desire to work together and decided to get more experience and position their professional careers towards that goal. After working in leading companies in the security and IT industries with each founder specialized in their own field, the idea was born when the founders thought how they can help prevent cyber-attacks using malware own defenses and techniques against it, and this led to the establishment of the company in mid-2016.

Since then, the company submitted a patent application, participated in Cyber London (CyLon) accelerator program, and recently released the latest version of the solution which is in use with customers and partners around the world.

Deceptive Bytes is also participating in the RBS-NatWest accelerator program aimed at scaling-up companies in the FinTech and Cyber Security industries.

In the road ahead, the company plans on developing the solution for other platforms as well as additional security solutions based on its core deception technology.

The Compassionate Founders

Deceptive Bytes leadership consists of more than 30 years of experience in cyber security, management and software development.

Sagi Lamay, CEO is a practical electronics engineer. In his latest roles, Sagi led the Sales and Project management (managing millions of Euros a year) in one of Israel's leading multimedia companies and as a General Manager of its subsidiary.

Avi Lamay, CTO holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science (Summa cum laude) with over 8 years of experience as a software and cyber security developer, including from Check Point in the Endpoint division and Verint Systems in the Cyber division.

Hen Lamay, VP R&D is a Mamram graduate (IDF's programming course) with over 13 years of experience as a software developer, team leader & project manager, including IDF's C4I corps/C2 branch and Elbit Systems in the EW land division.

Extraordinary Cyber Security Solutions

Deceptive Bytes identifies issues in software and security products and helps to improve them and reduce attack surfaces used by malware authors. The company also publishes articles on how to secure users' online presence and devices from potential attacks.

Prior to attacking, malware checks the environment it's in, making sure it's safe for it to execute, trying to evade detection by security systems and researches, and not to be discovered as much as possible by employing its evasion techniques.

The concept is to deceive the malware into stopping its malicious payload from executing by using its own defenses and techniques against it, and preventing the attack in the first place. Deceptive Bytes' solution uses deception on the endpoint in order for malware to believe it's in a hostile or unattractive environment to attack, stopping malware in its tracks! The best example is making the malware think it's in a sandbox environment which is used to automatically analyze and detect malware, causing it to shut down or act benign without activating its malicious payload. In recent research, it was found that 98% of malware use at least one sandbox evasion technique, increasing the ability to stop it by implement just this technique.

In one of its unique capabilities, the solution applies proactive deception to make malware believe its attack is successful while in reality the solution identifies this malicious attempt and prevents it in the first place. For example, giving a Ransomware the sense that its file encryption works but actually stopping it before any damage is done.

Awards and Recognitions

Before the inception of Endpoint deception, Network deception led the deception industry and advanced the change in the way defenders fight against cyber threats. In their blog post, Gartner mentioned Deceptive Bytes as the company that brings deception technology to the endpoint level.

More so, Deceptive Bytes was selected as one of the most promising startups in cyber security by CB Insights.

In a research by IVC Research Center and Tel-Aviv University's Blavatnik ICRC on the most connected people in the cyber security industry in Israel, the company's CTO Avi was ranked 15^th out of 2300 people listed.

Deceptive Bytes' customers and partners are impressed with how fast the solution is able to stop malware (sometimes in less than a second or two), how lightweight it is and how it doesn't interfere with their day to day work.

Facing Challenges Head On

Deceptive Bytes developed the company's solution in User-mode, although it increases the stability of the system and reduces the attack surface, it makes development more challenging. However, the company's unique approach allows the solution to overcome these limitations. This meant that the research and development had to be precise in the deception it deploys on the endpoint to be able to stop 99%+ of all threats.

Future Roadmap

Deceptive Bytes foresees the emergence of machine learning and AI-based threats that counteract defensive ones. "As threat actors increase utilizing ML/AI to attack, the need for advanced deception-based solutions will increase as well. While deception is gaining momentum year-to-year, mainly for network-deception, this year we're going to see endpoint-deception taking new grounds as more enterprises will implement deception-based solutions for their endpoints to increase prevention & detection of new threats and improving their security," said Sagi.