Much like natural disasters, cyberattacks have become a common occurrence. Rogue entities can strike anywhere and anytime leaving victims to deal with a devastating aftermath. Besides the financial cost, the disruption caused by the cyberattacks can have other serious effects such as damage to reputation, and loss of sensitive and critical data.
As an answer to these ever-present threats, Blackpanda, a leading cybersecurity and incident response firm, has launched its IR-1 incident response and vulnerability assessment service in the Philippines. Designed as an annual subscription based software-as-a-service (SaaS), IR-1 bundles several unique services for small and medium-sized enterprise clients. Blackpanda’s presence in the Asia Pacific region, with its offices in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, gives it an edge when it comes to localizing its services.
Included in the IR-1 service is a 24/7 incident response service where clients are guaranteed immediate access to its roster of cybersecurity experts who are trained in incident response.Â
Clients can also access the Blackpanda ASM, a powerful external Attack Surface Management tool with vulnerability dashboard and report generator. Also bundled with the service is a regular proactive vulnerability scanning service where clients can get a weekly assessment of their vulnerabilities. The service also includes online resources for Incident Response and financial damage assessment in case of an attack. Blackpanda is also working on introducing cyber-insurance in the Philippines which may be available at a future time.
Compared to similar services which are estimated to go around $70,000, Blackpanda is offering access to IR-1 for an annual subscription fee of $2,500 (small, maximum of 250 endpoint devices), $5,000 (medium, max 500 devices), and $10,000 (large, max 1000 devices).Â
Blackpanda’s familiarity with the Asia Pacific region and the Philippines extends to the company’s founder and CEO, Gene Yu, who has served in the US Army Special Forces. During his time in the Special Forces, he was assigned for some time in the southern regions in the country. He was even instrumental in a successful hostage rescue involving Abu Sayyaf terrorists in 2013. Yu compares Blackpanda’s service to firefighting where the company serves as first responders in the immediate event of a cyber attack Apart from a military background, Yu is also a computer science graduate from West Point. Rounding out the roster in Blackpanda Philippines are two other Filipino execs, Evelyn Del Monte who is the Managing Director and Ruck Del Rosario, who is Blackpanda’s Digital Forensics Incident Response Specialist.Â
In their press con held last April 22 at the Brittany Hotel in Bonifacio Global City, Blackpanda also released its study analyzing several cyber security vulnerabilities in SME firms across the Asia Pacific region. In their study, Blackpanda discovered three major vulnerabilities such as compromised assets, exposed web services, and known software vulnerabilities. Compromised assets represent the largest threat at 71.68% which includes email breaches, information leakage, and phishing attacks. It is followed by exposed web services and web service vulnerabilities at 69.92% and medium-risk level threats at 59.96%.
