2022 The Year Of True Zero Trust Technology (TZTT)

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HI! I’m Tom Sego, Co-founder and CEO of BlastWave and I’d like to share with you my reflections about 2021 as I look forward to 2022.

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When 2021 started, I thought, as many did, that this horrible COVID-19 nightmare would be in the rear-view mirror with the wide deployment of vaccines, we would get back to some normal order. Although life has changed and may never be the same, as human beings, we have the extraordinary ability to adapt, evolve and thrive.

At BlastWave, we look forward to a new year, satisfying the emerging demand for network security services that cloaks critical assets, isolates and prevents the spread of malware, and doesn’t require annoying usernames and passwords. Protecting networks has become especially important given the recent high-profile attacks, like Colonial Pipeline, JBS Meat Packing and  Solar Winds which demonstrated that the existing cyber model of “detect and patch” is not sufficient. We are steadfast in our efforts to bring a modern approach using first principles to an old problem that’s just not going away and seems to be getting worse. At BlastWave, we continue to be rooted in our commitment to prove that prevention is possible.

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Companies need a solution like ours that actually prevents or mitigates attacks instead of just triageing them after the fact. But sadly, many don’t believe such a solution is possible.

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We remain relentlessly optimistic and we strive for the best and do not tire from the journey to accomplish our goal, which is to protect the world’s networks from both inadvertent and intentional threats through zero trust.

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We have accomplished so much with an experienced and lean team and I am very proud of these accomplishments and growth and wanted to share some of the accomplishments that we achieved in 2021, as well as lessons learned, and our goals for 2022.

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Here are some of the highlights from 2021:

• We secured a leading engineering & construction company in Korea.
• We secured a non-profit organization in the Middle East whose mission is to make the world's information clearer and easier to use.
• We provided a successful proof-of-concept to a U.S. company that delivers mission-critical development and solves maintenance problems.
• We customized a solution for an important company responsible for storing and delivering a large percentage of our food supply in the US, ensuring that dangerous chemicals will not be compromised through ransomware attacks.
• We got the attention of the United States Government, including the White House.
• We enhanced BlastShield™ to include a host agent, mobile clients, and Kubernetes cluster and container workload protection.
• We instituted and launched a “freemium” version of our product to make it widely available to the public.
• We onboarded several partners to service a wider base of people who desperately need our solutions.
• We started receiving positive press from interviews with Sand Hill Group and ISMG’s Tom Fields.
• We came out of stealth mode and were interviewed by countless analysts and media outlets. As a result of the interviews, we were featured in Converge! Network Digest; Jim Carroll; Light Reading with Kelsey Ziser and Security Boulevard, Mike Vizard. And we expect more coverage over the next few weeks.
• We also secured A2i, which is an artificial intelligence company that helps optimize fuel pricing. They were extremely happy with our solution and surprised by the ease of use.
• We entered into several strategic arrangements with companies in the fields of energy, robotics, healthcare, and drone technology.
• We are working with one of the most premier, respected hackers in the world, who deeply believes in our product and will be telling her entire community about it.
• And finally, a leading research organization did an in-depth dive into our product and they came up with no real weaknesses or vulnerabilities after months of pen testing.

And now in terms of the lessons learned:

• CISO’s and CIO’s have been jaded by the undelivered, fantastical claims made by so many startups and cyber security companies over the past few years.
• The organizations that adopted BlastShield most readily were technology leaders who were absolutely not satisfied with the status quo. This was especially true if they were worried about the security of   VPN, Team Viewer, RDP (remote desktop protocol) or other legacy management solutions for remote access.
• Zero trust is on the mind of many CISO radars as the path forward, we discovered.
• CEOs and Boards of Directors increasingly feel the need to better monitor and manage cyber risk. Unfortunately, this has mostly taken the form of reporting and analytics instead of prevention solutions.

And now for our major goals in 2022, which are pretty short and sweet:

• We want to increase the awareness and reignite hope that cyberattack prevention is possible.
• We want to enhance our product to meet the current and future needs of "cloud-native" development as well as work from home and legacy protection.
• And finally, our primary goal, which I stated earlier, is to: Protect Networks from Inadvertent & Intentional Threats Through Zero Trust.

I am an optimist. I believe that we are poised to help customers cloak their critical assets, isolate and prevent the spread of malware, and eliminate those annoying usernames and passwords, and still enforce 100 percent MFA compliance.

On behalf of the BlastWave team, I wish everyone a healthy and successful 2022.