Why Building Cybersecurity Solutions remains Critical

Cyber Builders is a new publication about building successful cybersecurity products

Welcome to Cyber Builders, a newsletter where I share my views of the global and innovative cybersecurity market and how to build successful products and companies. This is the first post I will focus on my personal story and intentions starting this publication.

Cybersecurity is paramount—3 key considerations.

Firstly, you may wonder why I believe cybersecurity is a field where innovation, new products, and new companies still have room to grow.

In short, cybersecurity is a material discipline for our democracies, and it is, more than ever, time to build solutions that will tackle modern security, fraud, and privacy challenges. This newsletter will dive into many details of that aspects in later posts. For this first post, let me describe three of them.

A) Cybersecurity is paramount and impacts all aspects of modern society. The critical infrastructure is facing the threats of criminal and state-sponsored hackers. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown how cyberattacks can devastate hospitals and healthcare systems, which are already under immense pressure due to the pandemic. This demonstrates how cybersecurity is not just about protecting data but also about protecting people's lives.

B) New technologies such as AI, cloud, or IoT create new risks and challenges for cybersecurity. For instance, AI can automate attacks and make them more sophisticated. Cloud services can create new attack surfaces that attackers can exploit, and IoT devices can be vulnerable to attacks due to their limited security features. Understanding the risks associated with these technologies and taking appropriate measures to mitigate them is essential. Building products tailored for these news environments is critical.

C) The geopolitical context is more complex than ever. The USA, Europe, China, Russia, and "non-aligned" countries like India or the Middle East play intricate roles and form ad-hoc alliances. This complexity creates new cybersecurity challenges, such as cyber espionage. Threat intelligence is required to anticipate the technical vectors of attacks and the true motivation of threat agents. It is essential to stay informed about the geopolitical landscape and its potential impact on cybersecurity.

Why in English?

I am sure some of my beloved French contacts would think, “Why does Laurent write in English? He is a French 🇫🇷 Entrepreneur!”. I would answer, “Dear friends, it’s time to think globally and act as European citizens!”

I want to get heard by the whole cybersecurity community. This community is not limited to a country but is genuinely international. Security practitioners used to say that we need to outsmart malicious actors and criminals and that the criminals share more than the defenders. Writing in English is a way to share my views broadly.

Moreover, I sincerely think that Europe has a role to play. France, Germany, and Italy have a large pool of engineering talent. They have developed since a decade good security ecosystems. Unfortunately, they are still too segmented and too limited in their reach. Being European today is first thinking about how our actions will scale across Europe.

Why launch Cyber Builders now?

Based on my convictions above, sharing ideas and views on building next-generation cybersecurity companies, programs, and products is crucial.

In my experience, the success criteria for a cybersecurity startup are often misunderstood. While many new entrepreneurs enter this discipline, I have noticed that many lack the necessary background and market understanding to succeed. This is particularly challenging given the many stakeholders they must manage, including investors, customers, and the security community. Additionally, there are practitioners, distribution channels, and consulting companies to consider, not to mention the large body of regulations and standards that apply to cybersecurity.

To address these challenges, I plan to provide an in-depth analysis of these topics and more. I plan to share my personal learnings from the various tradeshows, conferences, and webinars I attend to give the Cyber Builders community a comprehensive understanding of the market.

I strongly encourage you to subscribe and join our community to build the future of cybersecurity. Through expert insights and inspiring stories from entrepreneurs, security leaders, and practitioners alike, we can work together to create a safer, more secure digital world. Let's build something great together!

My personal story

For the ones, who don’t know me, I wanted to share also a bio, so you will learn more about my background.

I was trained as an engineer and studied various fields, such as math, physics, mechanical engineering, computer science, and geology. The engineering school I attended aimed to train "generalists," so we studied various topics. I remember being in a geological practice class where I received a bunch of rocks on my table and had to classify and name them! It was a strange experience, and I still remember it, especially when we had to put our tongues on rocks to detect agile...

Those times were also my first experience with entrepreneurship. I participated in building and running an e-commerce website in 1998 with other students. With friends studying in the same place, we sold French products like meals, wine, and flowers online. It was a great time diving into how to build a website and manage a product catalog, a basket, and a checkout process.

My passion for computers and networking led me to specialize in these fields. I got my first computer at eight and started coding right away. Although, to be honest, at that age, it was more about copying long listings from magazines to the console. So, during college, I took special classes to learn more about programming and networks, including service provider protocols and architecture.

After graduation, I started at a cybersecurity company doing firewalls, VPNs, and PKI. As a software engineer, I coded new networking and crypto features and implemented an entire PKI.

Later, I moved to Arkoon, where I started as a release manager and, after a few years, became their VP of engineering and lead product manager for the firewall product. It was such a learning experience. I learned how to run an engineering and technical team, build a product vision and roadmap, and validate it with a set of marquis customers. Our team was great at the time, and many became CEOs, product, sales, or engineering leaders of scale-up companies later. The leadership team and I sold the business to Airbus Defense, helping the VCs who invested ten years before to exit. The company is now Stormshield, a flourishing firewalls and UTM business across Europe.

It was 2014, and it felt like the right time to do what I had on my mind for years: start my own technology startup from scratch. We discussed it with Thierry, former Arkoon’s CEO, and decided to launch a new venture together. I will cover more about how we selected the field and worked over the first months to build our initial miniature product. I think it is attractive for many cybersecurity companies and program builders.

Sentryo was a rapidly growing venture. We entered a dynamic market (OT cybersecurity), built an exceptional team and product (Cyber Vision), and secured funding from venture capitalists. Our business expanded to Germany, the USA, and the Middle East. In 2019, Cisco acquired Sentryo.

Cisco invested heavily in the Sentryo business. They expanded the engineering team, kept our flagship product Cyber Vision, and doubled down on the roadmap. Over four years, we added key features to the product and improved its scalability, quality, and security. I found it a great experience to join a team of world-class engineers who hold high standards for the intrinsic security of their products. I learned a lot from them and saw that everyone was focused on scale and automation. No project was left alone, and every product had to be automated to deliver continuous outcomes. We also grew the business and deployed our solution to hundreds of customers, protecting the largest manufacturer and utilities in the world.

And now I am embarking on a new venture, still in the cybersecurity field!

See you in the next post!

I plan to write a short or long-form post every week. There won't be a paid version; my reward will be the interactions and connections I make through this project. Please engage with me by sending messages, posting comments, or using Substack's threaded conversation system.

Let's build a community committed to tackling modern security, fraud, and privacy challenges and creating products tailored for new technology environments. Together, we can create a safer, more secure digital world.