ow does Darktrace’s AI technology – the Enterprise Immune System – protect businesses’ data? Poppy Gustafsson: “When AI lies at the core of your business, the maths involved is pretty complex, so we’re big on biological metaphors. The human immune system has an innate sense of self. By virtue of that, it can identify anomalies, such as viruses and bacteria, it has never seen before. Our technology replicates
this. It monitors the ‘pattern of life’ – the normal behaviour of every device on a network. It can identify when that pattern changes and respond autonomously.”
Can you give an example of the technology in use? PG: “Say you clicked on an email attachment that, unbeknownst to you, contained malware. Darktrace can very quickly spot that you have introduced it into your network and can stop the attack in progress. This means that the humans in your company will have to clean up one laptop rather than the entire network.”
How do you go about explaining a complex product to potential clients? Dave Palmer: “We have a videogame- style interface that draws you a picture of, say, a laptop that is grabbing data from a part of your network, trying to guess passwords and shipping this information to Austria while being controlled from Portugal. If we wrote a paragraph about that, you would get your head around the concept, but when you see a picture it’s more powerful. We do a lot of work on improving human-computer interaction, which I think is often missing in this industry. How do you invent something clever, but build it in such a way that businesses can truly adopt it?”
Last year Darktrace completed a funding round that took its valuation up to £1.25 billion. What have you learnt about investment and growth? PG: “Each of our investors has got something unique to bring us. Whether we’re expanding into new territories or diversifying our product portfolio, we can tap into their expertise. My advice is to remember that investors can provide a lot
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more than money. Make sure that you pick those that can give you what you need for the next stage of your development.” DP: “We go looking for the trends and breakthroughs that appear to have near- infinite potential. If we were to have 10 ideas for growing the business, for instance, we’d focus on the one that could be scaled up to cover a billion people if China were to knock on our door and say: ‘We want to protect the whole country.’”
You have offices in 40 countries and employ almost 900 people. How do you go about finding the right talent for your business? PG: “When you are doing something that hasn’t been done before, there is no rulebook that says: ‘You should hire this person.’ We bring in people who are really good at stuff, whether they have a background in traditional computer science, languages or whatever. If you can look at a problem from a lot of
DARKTRACE was founded in 2013 by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge and intelligence experts from MI5, GCHQ and the CIA. Its flagship product, the Enterprise Immune System, uses artificial intelligence to identify potential cyber threats to a network and stop attacks in progress, giving security teams time to act. The company is based in
Cambridge and San Francisco, employing nearly 900 people in 40 ofices around the world. Clients include Grant Thornton, Drax power station, the City of Las Vegas and the Science Museum Group. In September 2018 it landed a $50 million (£38 million) investment, taking its valuation to £1.25 billion.
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