CDSA

New Intrusion CEO Provides Details on the Company’s Revised Strategy

Tony Scott, the recently appointed CEO of Intrusion, provided details on the security software company’s revised go-to-market strategy during a strategic update conference call with investors on Jan. 25.

In recent years, Scott has seen a “changing landscape in terms of the kinds of threats,” he said.

During his time serving as the federal chief information officer of the U.S., Scott said he saw the limitations of cybersecurity solutions that were being offered by companies at the time.

Although the cybersecurity market is growing and, despite the billions of dollars already being spent, companies and organizations of every size in every industry are challenged by evolving and sophisticated cybersecurity threats, he said.

“That set of changes continues to this day,” he noted, adding: “It’s one of the reasons I was very interested in Intrusion,” which had a “set of technologies and [an] approach that was very relevant to the kinds of threats that we’re now facing today and will face in the future.”

After all, he told listeners, “cyber threats are not going away” and “there’s more zero-days as a percentage of all attacks than there [were] a few years ago,” he pointed out.” It’s been estimated, he said, that as much as 60% of new attacks are zero-day attacks in which bad actors take advantage of an organization’s computer system vulnerabilities without patches to correct them.

One key component of the company’s new strategy is adding products and services depth via cloud-based solutions targeted at well-known partners, he said.

For example, the company will be broadening its Shield security product offering to include cloud and endpoint solutions in the second half of 2022, he said.

Also planned are high availability/high throughput products to satisfy evolving customer needs and that will be easier for companies to try out, he added. One is a cloud-based product with no hardware, so there is nothing that needs to be inserted into a system, he noted.

Another key tenet of the strategy update are focused messaging and marketing efforts to highlight how Shield products boost the value and effectiveness of existing cybersecurity technologies that an organization may already have in place, he said.

There had been “mixed messaging” from the company in terms of its claims that he found confusing, so the company is now “tightening up its messaging about who we are, why we exist [and] why we should be in the conversation if we’re talking to potential customers,” he said. That “revised messaging [will] roll out over the next several weeks,” he added.

Also planned, he said: a repositioning and rightsizing of Intrusion’s sales and marketing resources to align with Shield’s growth opportunities; a focus on the firm’s strategic partners, value-added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs); plans to raise capital to deliver on new market and product opportunities; and a commitment to investing in and expanding Intrusion’s existing government business with existing and new customers.

Intrusion, meanwhile, is well-positioned to capture secular demand opportunities to protect against the growing cybersecurity threat, he also said.

Combined, the key goal is to improve the company’s performance and support stakeholder value, according to Intrusion.