The emergence of new digital assets and remote working conditions has opened up new opportunities for cybercriminals. They develop sophisticated cyberthreats that manage to successfully infiltrate the systems and obtain the most valuable asset today – information.

Traditional protection measures are often incapable of providing the necessary level of security. So, people are already employing robust two-in-one combinations of cybersecurity solutions that can protect both their devices and networks. But what about large-scale organizations?

Today, we talked with the CEO and Co-Founder of CYSEC, Patrick Trinkler, about data security, the most vulnerable sectors, and ways to improve cybersecurity posture.

How did CYSEC come about? What has your journey been like?

Before founding CYSEC, I worked on a project for protecting assets for a national bank and quickly realized that there were no tools or infrastructure to protect the new digital assets. As new business models emerged, such as digital currencies, the security solutions were not keeping pace, and the traditional solutions were not sufficient. This is how we decided to develop ARCA Trusted OS.

To make sure we were on the right path, we had many meetings with investors, clients, analyzing the assets market and challenges.

It has been an iterative process, getting in touch with new businesses linked to digital assets, being close to the potential users, to improve the quality of the solution we wanted to offer to address these new business challenges.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you do? What are the main challenges you help navigate?

I am initially an engineer, working in innovation since day one in different companies. The challenge in innovation is not only about the technology being developed but also about the market fit and the market traction. It’s what we are aiming to address. We focus on innovation via the development of technologies that solve real problems.

In your opinion, which industries should be especially concerned about securing their data?

Today’s news about the Ukrainian crisis and global warming are putting the finger on very critical infrastructure that needs to be secured, especially in the energy, transport, and space sectors. Data needs to be protected concerning the major challenges, coming from economic and geopolitical pressure.

Do you think the recent global events affected the way people perceive cybersecurity?

The example of the disruption in satellite connection impacting turbines is a very concrete case of the importance of securing space assets. Today, many critical services on Earth depend on the collection and transmission of data by satellites.

We are putting a lot of effort into raising awareness about the importance of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of space data against cyberthreats. This is why we are organizing CYSAT, the only European event dedicated to cybersecurity in the space industry, held in Paris and online on April 6-7, 2022.

In your opinion, what misconceptions do people tend to have regarding data security? If so, what are the most common myths?

There is often confusion between the concepts of privacy, confidentiality, and integrity, while they are different fields with different regulations. It is our responsibility to evangelize the importance of making a clear differentiation.

With remote work becoming the new normal, are there any serious issues that can arise when dealing with large amounts of data?

Remote work is only speeding up the process towards the global digitization of business operations. The use of decentralized and cloud-hosted solutions is no longer just about data storage. These solutions now extend to environments in which data is used for transactional purposes and supports the daily operations of companies, such as digitization of internal operations, back-office processes, production, R&D, etc.

The more we decentralized computing, the more we create new attack surfaces. Having a full-stack solution to ensure the protection of the data while it is being used is becoming a business imperative.

Besides quality data protection, what other tools and solutions do you think businesses of all sizes should make use of?

Trusted collaboration is key to overcoming tomorrow’s business challenges, and it requires an infrastructure ensuring data protection. A good example is the Covid 19 vaccine, where collocation was key for finding solutions faster and accessing the market faster with a product useful to the community.

Talking about average Internet users, what security practices do you think everyone should follow to protect themselves online?

This is a question of privacy, which relies on personal sensitivity and values. However, confidentiality and integrity are a question of business and value protection, as well as sovereignty. They are two different aspects and at CYSEC we focus on the second part, which is more tangible and at an organizational level.

Share with us, what’s next for CYSEC?

Given recent events, the challenges in terms of data protection in Europe are becoming a priority. CYSEC has the solutions to help in this process and aims to become a key player in the data sovereignty effort.