BitDepth#1459
Mark Lyndersay
ON TUESDAY, Pinaka Consulting hosted an enterprise-level introduction to Flexon's X-Phy cybersecurity products.
Pinaka has previously been involved in blockchain and central bank digital currencies consulting, along with ransomware tracking on the blockchain before taking this new step into hardware protection solutions.
Pinaka CEO Shiva Bissessar called on local businesses to begin taking the role of chief information security officer (CISO) more seriously, and to consider integrating the position into upper-level executive level decision-making.
The company will represent Flexon locally and in the Caribbean region.
"Pinaka has traditionally focused on information security-based consultancy," said Bissessar.
"In stepping into the cybersecurity solution provider role, we sought to bring unique innovation to the local and wider regional Caribbean market."
Flexon was represented by Irene Yeo, who gave an explanatory keynote on behalf of the female founded and led Singapore cybersecurity company.
Flexon began business in 2007 under the leadership of CEO Camellia Chan with a line of products that targeted niche industrial, medical, automotive and aerospace sectors before making a change in 2017 to static security solutions.
By 2019, those solutions had evolved into the company's first X-Phy secure solid state drive (SSD) with embedded artificial intelligence.
Flexon introduced its newest hardware protection systems last week, a NAND flash memory solution that's available in an NVME form factor as well as a one-slot PCI-E card for enterprise installations.
The new X-Phy product provides hardware level security that doesn't conflict with other software solutions, save for drive-level encryption products, since the cyber-secure drive does its own encryption as part of its protection regime.
The SSD-based hardware protection delivers a broad range of security responses by first creating a single access point through with data flows.
The resulting data stream is monitored by software that's embedded in a chip that's part of the drive hardware itself, providing a continuous review of access patterns using AI in the chip controller that monitors for possible malware intrusions with real-time detection and response to suspicious activity or patterns of attack consistent with known malware.
The on-chip AI intelligence can lock out new threats by isolating unusual patterns of access.
Regarding updates to the software embedded in the X-Phy, Flexon responded via messaging that, "We do not need constant updates like software (solutions). Our (infrequent) updates are for firmware or feature updates only. Detection is based on read/write/overwrite (patterns) within the drive and all commands need to bypass the firmware on our chipset for analysis and detection through the one-door access (implemented using) the PCIE/NVME protocol."
Yeo noted that an increasingly critical vector for data breaches and leaks is lost or stolen devices. Flexon's drive-level security measures
