By Byron V. Acohido

Security teams rely on an ever-growing stack of cybersecurity tools to keep their organization safe.

Yet there remains a glaring disconnect between security systems and employees.

Now comes a start-up, Amplifier Security, with a bold new approach to orchestrate security actions.

Just after RSAC 2024, I spoke with Thomas Donnelly, Amplifier’s co-founder and CTO, about how that they’re utilizing large language models (LLMs) and to emphasize continual employee engagements. For a full drill down, on how Amplifier aims to help companies shape a security culture — without sacrificing productivity — please give the accompanying podcast a listen.

At the heart of Amplifier’s solution is Ampy, an AI security buddy. Ampy interacts directly with each employee to facilitate automated security fixes. Ultimately Ampy offloads a ton of manual work that security teams typically have to do by chasing employees themselves.

Donnelly explained how Amplifier leverages LLM to make Ampy friendly and increasingly knowledgeable. For instance, Ampy helped one early customer achieve a 70 percent improvement in security training compliance in just a couple of weeks and other customers report material improvement in the time and effort required to manage vulnerabilities.

By making security very engaging and directly involving employees in security processes, CISOs can foster cross-functional teamwork with other departments, Donnelly argues. The clincher is that this can help them get firmer footing to secure employees and their assets, using existing tools, and thereby nurture a security culture, he says.

Makes a lot of sense. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

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(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

July 2nd, 2024