Jazz Networks Wins U.S. Cyber Command Competition
Cybersecurity Startup Competes Against Top Vendors at DreamPort’s Insider Threat Attack Competition
Jazz Networks – a cybersecurity intelligence company – has placed first in a competition to detect insider threat attacks in real-time during a simulated U.S. Cyber Command battlefield.
“With only five people on site, we were up against much larger teams from some of the best companies in the space, like Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Crowdstrike, Splunk, and LogicHub”
DreamPort is a cyber innovation and collaboration center created by USCYBERCOM through a Partnership Intermediary Agreement awarded to the Maryland Innovation and Security Institute (MISI). Dreamport held The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing competition in Columbia, MD from January 29 – February 14. The event sought to identify user activity monitoring (UAM) solutions that employed advanced, real-time analysis of multiple data sources for anomaly detection, specifically those that offered both predictive monitoring and policy-based monitoring features.
DreamPort used live portions of its HQ environment of Windows and Linux machines, paired with human actors posing as ‘bad’ at random, executing unauthorized actions. Participants were awarded points based on how quickly they could detect attacks and how effectively they could contextualize and present related details. In addition to Jazz Networks, the contenders included several of the world’s leading artificial intelligence and machine learning players in the EDR, UBA, and SIEM space.
During the competition, Jazz’s machine learning sensors identified unusual activity, which engineers were able to further investigate using the platform’s Power Search. The team was able to reconstruct the string of events that led up to the attacks and determine which actor was ultimately responsible. At the conclusion, Jazz Networks ranked the highest in seven categories, including Highest Number of Detections, Malicious/Suspicious USBs Added to Network, and Best Overall Performance.
“Some tools are more apt for incident response, and some more for detection, but Jazz has the versatility to do both. We stood out because of our ability to automatically detect and contextualize the suspicious events, all the way up to identifying the user’s intention,” said Jazz Networks CEO, Hani Mustafa. “The key in determining true user intention requires a mixture of User Behavior Analytics (UBA), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and UAM in a single platform.”
“The team was very impressed with the level of sophistication of the attacks organized by the team at Dreamport,” stated Jazz Networks VP, Federal, John Sparks. “Being able to rigorously test and prove the Jazz Platform in these real-world scenarios was a great opportunity to show the Federal community what we can do.”
“With only five people on site, we were up against much larger teams from some of the best companies in the space, like Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Crowdstrike, Splunk, and LogicHub,” said Fredrik Halvorsen, Jazz Networks Chairman. “Small teams can have huge impact with the right technology. We may be new, but I think this helps prove that there will be Jazz!”
Jazz Networks recently announced the v4 release of its platform, which was used at the competition (read the release here).
About Jazz Networks
Jazz Networks is a cybersecurity platform that simplifies insider threat detection and breach prevention. The platform automates employee training the instant they make a mistake, applies policies while data is in motion to prevent data loss, and provides the fastest threat hunting and forensic capabilities for investigations. Founded in 2016, Jazz Networks has more than 100 employees with offices in Oslo, London, and New York.
About the Competition
https://dreamport.tech/event-rpe-003-the-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.php
About MISI
Hugh Taylor
Hugh Taylor is a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM). In addition to editing Journal of Cyber Policy, he writes about cybersecurity, compliance and enterprise technology for such clients as Microsoft, IBM, SAP, HPE, Oracle, Google and Advanced Micro Devices. Prior to launching his freelance writing career, he served in executive roles at Microsoft, IBM and several venture-backed technology startups.