Safety Detectives: Please share your company background, how you got started, and your mission?
Q6 Cyber: Q6 Cyber is the leading provider of e-crime intelligence. We monitor the “Digital Underground” – including the Dark Web, Deep Web, malware networks, fraud, and cybercrime infrastructure – to proactively identify threats before they materialize into cyber attacks and fraud losses. Our targeted intelligence enables organizations to preempt a wide range of attacks, such as network intrusions, ransomware, customer account takeovers, payment card fraud, and many other cyber and financial crimes. Q6 Cyber has offices in the USA, Israel, and Costa Rica. Many of our team members are veterans of the NSA, US Secret Service, and Israeli Military Intelligence (Unit 8200).
A few years ago, we looked around and saw that despite huge investments in cybersecurity and fraud prevention tools, the attacks and resulting losses have consistently increased. We understood that a big part of the problem is that for years, cybersecurity and fraud prevention tools have taken “the-best-offense-is-a-good-defense” approach, attempting to detect and block malicious activity in real-time. Often, that’s too little, too late. So, we asked ourselves, what if you can take a more proactive approach? What if you can gain timely and actionable intelligence on what the bad guys are planning? Imagine you are protecting a physical perimeter. You can install cameras and sensors to detect an intruder attempting to breach the perimeter. That’s useful, but when you do detect an intruder, it’s late. Now imagine if you install sensors and cameras 5 miles outside your perimeter to detect intruders, and you can see what weapons they are carrying, and in what formation they are approaching. In that case, you proactively intervene to ensure that they have no chance of even reaching your perimeter. Apply the same concept to the digital world. That’s what we do.
Our mission is to transform information security and fraud prevention organizations from reactive to proactive. Rather than wait for an attack to materialize, we want our partners to take the initiative, identify the threats early, and eliminate them.
SD: What is the main service your company offers?
Q6 Cyber: Our solution is oriented around Fraud Intelligence and Cyber Threat Intelligence. In Fraud Intelligence, we provide actionable and proactive intelligence related to financial crimes targeting our clients. These crimes include customer account takeovers, compromised payment cards, mule accounts, etc. In Cyber Threat Intelligence, we provide actionable and proactive intelligence related to cyber-attacks targeting our clients. Examples include internal data and network breaches, supply-chain exposure, senior executive monitoring, etc.
SD: What is something unique that helps you stay ahead of your competition?
Q6 Cyber: In our business, it’s all about the quality and timeliness of the intelligence. We have unparalleled 24/7 collection from a wide range of clandestine sources, that are aggressively targeting different types of organizations (e.g., financial services, healthcare, e-commerce, technology) and their customers. This means that our intelligence is very fresh and therefore extremely actionable. Additionally, with a powerful combination of cyber threat AND anti-fraud intelligence, we have proven to generate high ROI. On average, our solution pays for itself within 3 months.
SD: What do you think are the worst cyberthreats today?
Q6 Cyber: Ransomware. Supply-chain attacks. Account takeovers.