During my visit to Black Hat Europe 2023, I had the chance to meet Éric Leblond, the co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer and Mark Durrett, the Chief Marketing Officer. We discussed about Stamus Networks and how the company is helping its clients, future projects in 2024, case studies and the outcomes from the Black Hat Europe.

Mark has a background in cybersecurity; he has served as the senior marketing and product executive at Netsertive, Emerging Threats, Overture Networks, Covelight Systems and Hatteras Networks. Éric worked in cybersecurity for over 20 years. First, he worked with the Netfilter Core Team for the Linux kernel’s firewall layer. He has also worked on the development of Suricata.

Stamus Networks envisions a world where defenders emerge as heroes, safeguarding a future where those under their protection remain secure. In the face of threats posed by well-funded adversaries, the company’s relentless commitment revolves around crafting solutions that not only simplify but enhance the effectiveness of the defender’s role.

As a prominent global provider specializing in high-performance network-based threat detection and response systems, Stamus Networks empowers enterprise security teams by providing deeper insights, enabling quicker responses, and reducing risks through comprehensive analysis of both cloud and on-premise network activities.

What does Stamus Networks do?

Mark: We monitor traffic for large organisations to help them identify severe threats and unauthorised activity that is taking place in their organisation. Stamus Networks is unique, as we are focusing on security experts, and as such, our solution really provides a level of control details and transparency that organisations are looking for.

Do you aim to have your products globally or focus only on Europe?

Mark: Our products are deployed in 13 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

What is unique about Stamus Networks products?

Éric: We are not trying to impose a view on the network activity; we believe that the client is more clever than we are because they know their organisation. So, we have multiple ways to get into the data. We guide them on how to use the mechanism by themselves, too, but at the same time, we have access to the data so our experts can look into different things and not lose context. We investigate because the key point in cybersecurity detection is to understand the context fast, even if it is for 20 minutes.

Do you have a case study that you could share with us?

Mark: One case study is with a large Central Bank in Europe, where they were looking to replace their legacy intrusion detection system infrastructure with something more powerful like Stamus Networks after an extensive evaluation. We are operating on their production network today and helping protect trillions of euros’ worth of assets.

What should we expect from Stamus Networks in 2024?

Mark: We are obsessed with providing new innovative solutions for defenders, which is part of the company’s founding principle. In fact, we have historically provided several free, open-source tools, including our flagship open-source product, called SELKS, which is downloaded more than 1000 times each month. As a general rule, we will continue to push the pipeline of open-source and free solutions in the market. As we entering 2024 we will enhance the detection capabilities of our solutions and increase the number of integrations with third parties systems, this is very important. As well as we will provide some additional high-level reporting capabilities that will be better and stronger than they are today.

Éric: I am really proud that our customers can smoothly upgrade from one version to the other with new features coming in. So when an organisation buys a product, it is buying a product that will evolve and can access the latest versions.

What are your expectations from Black Hat Europe 2023?

Mark: First and foremost, we want more people to know about us; we consider ourselves the best-kept secret in network security. Introduce the company to more defenders so we can help them to protect their organisations.

What conferences and events are you attending in 2024?

Mark: In Europe, we will be in Infosec, back in the Black Hat Europe, RSA, Black Hat USA and many more.