“Make something people want” is a common startup mantra. But in the field of cybersecurity, it’s the opposite. It’s about stopping people from having what they want. Before understanding your customers, you need to understand their attackers, the hackers. And to do that, you need to think like a hacker.

Rahul Sasi is one such founder who fits the role of hacker mindset. His hacking days started in college when he hacked his college’s attendance system from where he dropped out to pursue his curiosity in cybersecurity. With that curiosity and an urge to solve his own problems, Rahul founded CloudSEK. Today Rahul is acknowledged as one of the top influential Indian security researchers, has delivered talks in 20+ countries on cybersecurity and written for national dailies.

Side note for entrepreneurs on acquiring customers. During a job interview, Rahul asked the interviewer, ‘Rather than hiring me, why don’t you buy from me?’ That’s how CloudSEK got its first customer!

And like its founder, today CloudSEK is one of the leading cybersecurity companies coming out of India. CloudSEK’s AI-driven digital risk monitoring platform scans internet sources, including the Surface Web, Deep Web, and Dark Web, to detect cyber threats, data leaks, brand infringements, and identity theft. Its no-code platform enables businesses to monitor, analyse and predict cyber threats.

Whether you call data the new oil or the new gold, it is definitely lucrative to steal it. The larger the business, the more attractive it becomes for attackers, and the greater the potential damage.

Here are a few interesting cybersecurity facts and stats:

• 60% of data offered for sale on the dark web comes from breaches in the last 12 months.
• 46% of organisations say they suffered reputational damage due to a data breach.
• 15+ billion stolen credentials from 100,000+ breaches are available on the dark web.
• Cybercrime is projected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
• It takes an average of 277 days to identify and contain a data breach.
• The average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023.
• The financial services sector faces 35% of all data breaches.

Any business which cares about its brand and operations can’t afford to be in the dark about the dark web. Cybersecurity is more about defence than offence. For this companies need to be able to recognise threats and attacks before they can cause any damage.

This is where CloudSEK helps businesses. By leveraging advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, CloudSEK emulates how a hacker thinks and acts, to predict and identify threats with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

But when it comes to predicting threats, accuracy and speed are mission critical. If you are not accurate you’ll just generate false positives which will tire out the customer and eventually they’ll churn. And if you can’t offer speed then it’s as good as if your product didn’t exist.

Here, Rahul’s decade plus experience and recent advancement in AI come into play. CloudSEK leverages AI to analyse vast amounts of data at speeds that manual processes simply can’t match, making it essential for predicting and mitigating emerging threats.

This capability, integrated into CloudSEK’s award-winning product lineup—Xvigil, SVigil, and BeVigil—equips businesses to handle threats rather than be caught blindsided. Plus CloudSEK’s seamless integration with existing cybersecurity infrastructure addresses the change management piece within large enterprises, making adoption frictionless.

All of this has contributed to CloudSEK doubling its customer count in the last 12 months. And today their customer list includes Global Enterprises and Fortune 500 companies.

But Rahul isn’t just building a company. He is building a safer internet which we can all trust and use. Data leaks don’t just affect companies; they impact regular folks like you and me, ranging from targeted scams to identity theft. And with time the intensity and severity of these attacks is only going to increase.

As Rahul puts it, “Today we are fighting against humans in cybersecurity. Tomorrow we won’t be fighting humans, we might be fighting machines. So the technology and the product we are building have far more importance in the future than it is today. There is a lot to lose.”

The world of atoms now runs on bits. From global supply chains to financial rails of the modern world, everything is on a network. From your morning coffee, to the cab you take, to the streaming service you use, all of it needs a digital network. This convenience comes at the cost of being vulnerable to attacks. But we are not going back to old ways as that is not the way to building a brighter future.

As Venture investors we are in the business of believing in a better future. And Cybersecurity has a big role to play in this bright future. This makes us bullish on the cybersecurity sector.

We are proud to back CloudSEK, an exceptional cybersecurity company coming out of India that is leading the path for many more. Today, the global cybersecurity market is around $220 billion. It is projected to reach $500 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 8.8%. CloudSEK’s cutting-edge approach and deep commitment to make cybersecurity intelligent and predictive has positioned it to become one of the global leaders in cybersecurity.

To learn more about CloudSEK listen to Rahul on The Neon Show below

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8