Founder & CEO
Newport Beach - CA United States
The big idea: In 25 words or less, please tell us how this Fast 50 Nominee is helping to address the planet's problems.
Innovative Security Startup delivers revolutionary security access assessment technology empowering organizations worldwide to instantly and accurately uncover unauthorized access grants on vital corporate IT assets.
Please describe how this nominee is using business as a force of positive change. What technology, idea, or strategy is the nominee using -- and what problem, such as global warming, poverty, or pollution, does it address? (suggested length: 100 words)
ADDRESSING A GLOBAL PROBLEM –
From the US White House to the British Houses of Parliament, and from Corporate America to the emerging powerhouses of Asia, at the foundation of information security at over 85% of IT infrastructures worldwide, lies Microsoft’s Windows Server family of operating systems.
Even though these organizations collectively spend billions of dollars to secure their networks and implement sophisticated access control systems, they face one critical weakness in their security due to the non-existence of a fundamental of security capability – unauthorized access grants pervade their infrastructures because the ability to determine who currently has what access to their IT assets doesn’t exist.
As a result, while users and IT administrators at these organizations are constantly provisioned varying levels of access to thousands of IT assets to meet business needs, these provisioned access grants are seldom revoked even after there are no longer needed, and usually remain forever. This is primarily because the ability to easily and reliably assess currently provisioned access grants is simply non-existent.
Consequently, these access grants remain and aggregate over time, and as a result, today, unauthorized access pervades over 85%of IT infrastructures worldwide, exposing thousands of organizational IT assets to the highly concerning currently unmitigated risk of rampant unauthorized access, which is easily discoverable and exploitable.
WITH AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION –
Paramount Defenses Inc, founded by a former Microsoft Windows Server Security Program Manager, has developed and delivered the world’s first IT security access assessment solution, the Gold Finger, which allows organizations to easily and efficiently determine (and as a result, reliably secure) precisely who has what assess on vital IT assets, across an entire IT infrastructure, at the touch of a single button.
Gold Finger’s patent-pending access assessment capabilities deliver on a paramount global need and empower organizations to quickly, efficiently and reliably identify and eliminate thousands of unauthorized access grants that pervade IT infrastructures and that pave thousands of privilege escalation related security holes which endanger organizational security today.
The company’s revolutionary technology thus delivers an essential and currently non-existent risk management capability (access assessment) that empowers organizations worldwide to secure and defend their IT assets from the risk of compromise. No other information security company in the world can currently solve this pervasive and elemental problem, let alone make it as easy as touching one button.
EARNING REPUTABLE RECOGNITION –
The company was recently recognized as one of the Top–10 Most Innovative Security Companies in the World at the RSA Conference 2007 which was keynoted by Bill Gates and General Colin Powell. In addition, as recently as March 2008, Microsoft Corporation recognized Paramount Defenses has a valuable partner and endorsed the Gold Finger with a powerful testimonial (available on company website.)
The company operates under the guidance of a respectable Advisory Board, headed by former Microsoft Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Karen Worstell. Other advisory board members include Chuck Packard, former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to US Billionaire, George Argyros Sr., who was also former US Ambassador to Spain, Alan Fudge, CEO of GuardianEdge Technologies, whose endpoint encryption solutions today protect major government and business institutions including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the US Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, Morgan Stanley and others.
GROWING FAST & PURSUING VAST POTENTIAL –
Information security plays a paramount role in national and business security today, and with the delivery of a highly innovative, patent-pending and simple to use information security capability that addresses an essential need of over 85% of IT infrastructures worldwide, Paramount Defenses is poised to witness explosive growth in the next two years, and beyond, and could be one of the fastest growing companies in the world this year.
What are the results, both financial and social? How has the nominee's business performed, and what impact has it had on the problem it addresses? (suggested length: 100 words)
For a self-funded start-up, we think that Paramount Defenses is performing exceptionally well, and has thus far demonstrated consistent and steadfast execution.
Its founder has built the company from the ground up, and in less than two years, single-handedly, taken a powerful and innovative idea from concept to delivery, with a patent-pending, global recognition as a Top–10 Innovator at RSA, a world-class Advisory Board, a powerful Microsoft partnershp and endorsement, to its first customer acquisition (a $700 publicly held company) within a month of product delivery.
Today, IT personnel at numerous prominent organizations, including major defense contractors to leading financial institutions, and Microsoft IT itself, are in the midst of evaluating the product, for eventual deployment. Given current interest, the company expects to close over a dozen prominent enterprise sales this year, and land over one hundred organizational customers in the next eighteen months. It has zero debt, and is cash-flow positive.
From a social perspective, the company is helping organizations worldwide swiftly mitigate a serious risk to their information security posture, thereby enhancing the security of business and government organizations across the world that deliver essential services and products to the world, and by extension helping secure the peace and prosperity of a global citizenry who are employees, partners, stock holders and customers of these companies.
Comments that readers have made about this submission:
As the owner of a business with 53 employees, many of whom know far more about computers than the management, this is of great concern to me. We continue to find instances, even unintentional, of users getting into data that they should not have access to. As much as we've adopted technology, it seems that it has created an enormous security issue for us, which i anticipate will only worsen over time.
Paramount Defenses is doing something no one else has dared to tackle by creating solutions to address the lack of insight and accountability in the identity & access management space. This company and its innovative approach to the problem is playing an important role around the world in protecting data and reducing the risks associated with unintended access to critical resources.
Having worked with GoldFinger and explored its capabilities thouroughly I am totally pleased with the technology.
Paramount Defenses Gold Finger is a critical component of a complete security solution for any organization using Active Directory. Without the clear, actionable, administrative access information that Gold Finger provides, organizations can be at real risk for insider threats, and regulatory non-compliance, and not even be aware of it.
The need to know who has access to what is paramount to business and national security today, yet very few infosec companies in the world have actually been able to solve this essential and vital problem.
RSA's and Microsoft's recognition of the company's innovative technology seem to validate the company's value proposition. Given that most of the world runs on Windows, it also appears that this company has vast potential to pursue.
If the Gold Finger from Paramount Defenses can indeed deliver on its claimed capabilities, then this company clearly seems to champion innovation and could possibly enjoy disruptive growth.
Interestingly, it seems to be a prime acqusition target by a big security vendor (Symantec?) or an infrastructure solutions company (Microsoft?), especially given Microsoft's $50B war chest.
Very interesting company indeed, and seemed like the only one in the InfoSec space nominated - thank you Fast Company for shedlling light on little known but very interesting companies out there.
Very innovative solution to a very pressing security issue...
Very innovative solution to a very pressing security issue...
Security is about risk mitigation, which is based on an accurate assessment of exposure and impact. Neither can be properly assessed without knowing who has access to which assets. Paramount Defenses' Gold Finger provides this critical data for Windows Server-based IT infrastructures, which comprise the overwhelming majority of IT infrastructures worldwide, including those of governments and major corporations.
It is the need of the hour that has been addressed, and very timely. Congratulations to Paramount Defenses on coming out with their innovative prouct, and making it available for one and all to try and experience its' potential. It will go a long way in addressing our active directory security requirements.
Gold Finger fills a critical gap in a company’s ability to manage identity and access - simple and intuitive visibility into who has access to do what within an organization. Providing this visibility into critical - and often hidden - aspects of security enables Paramount Defenses to differentiate themselves from others.
As an enterprise IT administrator for a large financial institution, I know the importance of securing our Active Directory deployment, upon which our entire Windows IT Infrastructure runs 24-7.
We also have a lot of delegated admins given that we're large and decentralzied. As a result, we need to know on a daily basis who is delgated what administratve access in our Active Directory, and today it takes over us weeks to manually determine this.
We are in the midst of evaluating Gold Finger and can state with reasonably high confidence that we are simply amazed by how easy Gold Finger makes it to solve this important problem. It provides us the ability to obtain instant realtime insight into the state of administrative access grants, which is something we really value.
Gold Finger makes a very hard problem very easy to solve and saves us a lot of time and valuable IT$ which our IT group can focus on other problems. I have not seen any other security product that comes remotely close to solving this problem, let alone making it is so easy to solve.
Paramount Defenses has indeed demonstrated real innovation in a very important field and we hope that they continue to deliver equally innovative solutions to some really hard problems that so many companies in the world (including us) continue to face in the information security space.
Paramount Defenses' GoldFinger is such a simple solution several big problem spaces. I just like seeing the GoldFinger in action...what a great and essential tool to have...
For additional info, please consider visiting -
Company Website - http://www.paramountdefenses.com
Community Website - http://www.activedirsec.com
Thanks,
PD Staff
zelcaace
