海角大神

Behind most tech startups is a team of investors. Behind many of the cybersecurity startups that have grown into behemoths is Ted Schlein. A longtime partner at Silicon Valley鈥檚 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Schlein spearheaded investments in LifeLock, Bit9, and Mandiant, which was recently snapped up in a billion-dollar acquisition by FireEye. He also sits on the board of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment firm that funds technology to support the听Central Intelligence Agency's mission. Passcode spoke to Schlein about trends in cyber defense鈥檚 growing industry.听Edited excerpts follow.听

Passcode:听Global cyberattacks have increased this year. Have you also seen more cybersecurity startups emerging from Silicon Valley in the last year?

听TS:听Yes. Although, security has always been a relatively steady area of investment in the Valley. The threats have always been there and they continue to get worse year after year. Large corporations are always willing to take chances on startups. I think the fact is that cyberthreats and cyberbreaches are becoming more mainstream and more topical. It鈥檚 caused more investment dollars to flow into the area.

Passcode: If it鈥檚 a steady area of investment, why are the attacks getting worse?

TS:听The bad guys go where the money鈥檚 at. In the world of cyber, there are two kinds of threats. There鈥檚 information stealing or there鈥檚 monetary stealing. If it鈥檚 information, it鈥檚 usually coming from the Chinese. If it鈥檚 monetary, it鈥檚 usually coming from Eastern Europe. We live in an interconnected world. The sophistication that comes with some of the tools of cybercrime has just led to more dollars being stolen.

Passcode:听You mentioned information stealing. How is commercial encryption adapting to mitigate that threat?

TS:听Encryption is very tricky to employ in a mass way: The infrastructure needed to manage it is complicated. I鈥檓 working with a company called Ionic Security that鈥檚 attempting to allow people to encrypt all of the data in their systems, keep it encrypted in the cloud, and then only unencrypt it when you have been positively authenticated to be who you say you are. I think encryption technology may be a data-centric approach to security, rather than trying to stop bad guys across the network.

Passcode:听So, is the trend in emerging cybersecurity technologies more preventative than predictive?

TS:听I see a big trend moving away from prevention to what I call detection. Most people are starting to realize that there are only two different types of companies in the world: those that have been breached and know it and those that have been breached and don鈥檛 know it. Therefore, prevention is not sufficient and you鈥檙e going to have to invest in detection because you鈥檙e going to want to know what system has been breached as fast as humanly possible so that you can contain and remediate.

We鈥檙e working with a company called Shape Security that鈥檚 invented the world鈥檚 first botwall. A botwall is able to determine: is this traffic for this website coming from an automated source versus a human? And if it鈥檚 coming from somebody automated, stop it. If it鈥檚 a human, allow it to go through.

Passcode:听How are companies better equipping themselves, talent wise, to fight cybercrime?

TS:听I don鈥檛 believe global 2000s are able to hire the talent that you need to combat today鈥檚 cybercriminals. I think the concept of crowdsourcing your security needs is starting to arise.

I鈥檓 working on a company called Synack, which is really a way for you to crowdsource some of the top security researchers in the world. And you as a company can contract with Synack and they will turn these security researchers on your corporate assets to show you how secure you are. So in other words, you鈥檙e hiring them to hack into your systems on an ongoing basis to make sure that you do what you need to do to protect yourself.

Passcode:听What cybersecurity risks do you see coming into play on an international scale?

TS:听As terrorist groups become more sophisticated, they鈥檙e going to use cyber means to do their terrorism. The Balkanization of the Internet ... could lead to much larger cyber threats. Obviously, right now, there seems to be a mistrust of the US due to the Snowden leaks, and I hope that that subsides because I do think that the US is in the best position to protect a lot of the infrastructure, more so than many other countries.

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