Introduction

ProDefense are an offensive security team specializing in penetration testing, red team operations, zero-day research, and security engineering. They find vulnerabilities before adversaries do with a complete cyber security offer, including their own polygraph machine (i.e. lie detector machine). We chat with the founder / CEO Andrii Halych.

Core Offer, a one stop shop

Andrii summarizes his offer as they provide complex security solutions in one place, a full cycle of services. Topics include covering technical support, legal support, he is also an attorney, investigations with a specialization in crypto-currency. Investigations also include polygraph services. Most crooks I’ve come across in telecoms rely on people not following through with investigations, chalking it up to experience. When there’s an investigation, they more often than not get found out.

They are building out areas of expertise, including forensics, a cyber lab, and incident investigations. The core principle of ProDefense is a single agency to meet most needs, covered with a single contract, the client’s data is contained within one secure domain, not transferred between subcontractors. Security is complex, and ProDefense is tackling that directly.

They are approached by clients on the topics of cyber security, business security, personal security, etc. And they help clients with the processes to stabilize and improve operations and investigations. At the conference were Bohdan met Andrii, what impressed Bohdan were all the devices available for spying. ProDefense performs security sweeps to discover such devices.

The rise of the malicious insider

This overlap between online and physical is critical with the rise of the malicious insider, as highlighted by Freaky Clown. Bohdan mentioned the work ProDefense does with the FBI in crypto investigations, we’ll review that at another time.

Their customers vary from private individuals to businesses, including people in government. People ask for help in protecting their devices from hackers, and ProDefence can configure the devices specific to the private individual’s needs. They even offer an emergency button, configured for your specific needs, e.g. alert your lawyer and encrypt / delete all your data, or enable video recording on all devices, pricing is generally $1K to $2k.

Bohdan asks about pricing for spy device scanning, they have published fees based on the area surveyed. However, generally pricing depends on the specific customer needs, as it can be quite specialized. Andrii highlights an interesting problem with secure devices, people do not use them unless they are expensive. I highlight how reporting on usage to their boss could be a method. But price seems to matter as a consistent reminder to use them.

Which brought us back to people issues in security being the weakest link. This led onto experiences share by Dima (Alerts bar) and Aaron (TRaViS) in showing the weakness make the clients feel threatened.

Social Engineering

Bohdan asked about fraud using social engineering, we covered this with Matt Holland. Andrii shared an interesting story, that they performed an investigation. As soon as the investigation was announced, an insider in a partner of the business owned up to the fraud. This is a great example of why investigating fraud often catches the the cheats, as they assume there will not be an investigation, as they getaway with it yet again.

Investigate fraud to catch the cheats!

Bohdan shared an experience at MWC where SIM boxes and SMS blasters where being promoted by companies attending the show. Andrii was happy, as it creates even more work for him. The crooks are getting more brazen as there is no one guarding the integrity of the PSTN. The state of robocalling in the US is frankly disgusting.

I asked Andrii how he’s growing his business. He reflects it’s a complex and diverse business. His role as CEO is key in uniting the many function. He has many partners, e.g. in the part of the business that searches for hidden devices he has 2 partners. For cyber security has has one. He frankly shares the power of ProDefense, trusted relationships, with people that bring many specialist in their respective specialties.

We wish Andrii the best of fortune in building ProDefense.