Cybersecurity innovation accessible to SMEs
Duration: 9m
In this episode, Prompt General Manager Liette Lamonde talks to Sylvain Lussier of Eva Technologies about an innovative platform designed to help SMEs become cyber-resilient.
Here’s an overview:
(Liette) Let’s talk about your project because we funded one of yours. We’re talking about a platform you’ve developed to strengthen the resilience of SMEs, simplify their compliance and improve their overall cybersecurity posture. But what exactly, Sylvain, is the problem or need to be solved for SMEs?
(Sylvain) The main problem for SMEs is that they have neither the budget nor the resources for IT security. They can’t afford to hire information security specialists or security managers. What’s more, current frameworks such as CMMC, Law 25 and CIDS are primarily designed for large companies. SMEs often find themselves completely lost when it comes to complying with these standards.
On the other hand, there are security bulletins. These bulletins are published regularly by most major companies, such as Microsoft, Adobe and others. Every month, or at regular intervals, these companies send out security bulletins to inform about vulnerabilities detected in their applications. They also provide patches to resolve these problems.
In concrete terms, what might the threats facing SMEs today look like in terms of cybersecurity?
There are many threats out there, but for SMEs, the biggest risk is undoubtedly ransomware. SMEs often lack resilience. If a ransomware attack occurs, they have no backups, or have not tested those backups.
We ensure that their digital ecosystem is resilient, and prepare them for evolving threats by putting in place the right processes and tools to achieve these goals.
So this innovation you’ve developed, what impact does it have on our SMEs?
The main impact of our portal, and our aim for SMEs, is to enable them to audit their infrastructure easily, step by step. We break the process down into 10 clear, achievable steps, so that it doesn’t look too complex and they can follow them efficiently.
Innovation is never easy, and neither is R&D. Were there any challenges you encountered?
Innovation always starts with an idea or a goal, but the path to get there is often unknown, winding and sometimes dark. Often, there are gaps in current technology that we seek to improve or eliminate. For the current project, we evaluated and tested different solutions, for example, to correlate security bulletins with the environment of SME customers. What’s more, as I mentioned, we’re fortunate to work with some exceptional partners.
