ExtraMile by SecureITWorld is a top-leading interview series featuring visionary industry leaders and pioneers. Here we discuss the prevailing trends, strategies, and practices in the tech, digital, and cybersecurity space.
Today, we’re ecstatic to host Ambuj Kumar, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Simbian, a mission-driven AI security company. Simbian brings the security industry's first reasoning large language model (LLM) for security automation, with AI Agents that function as independent virtual employees. The agents assist organizations in automating security operations, from SOC alert response to threat-hunting agents and GRC processes, reducing costs and improving accuracy.
As the Co-Founder & CEO of Simbian, Ambuj put forth his wealth of expertise in data protection, cryptography, and enterprise security. Here in Simbian, Ambuj’s whole and sole aim is to build Fully Autonomous Security.
In this discussion, Ambuj takes us through his entrepreneurial experience, the problems businesses encounter when they are scaling security, and how Simbian's AI-based platform is an end-to-end solution to staying ahead in today's cyber world.
Welcome Ambuj! We’re super glad to have you with us today!
1. You have had the perfect blend of leadership and expertise throughout your professional journey. How has your experience in established organizations and startups combined to shape your leadership abilities?
Ans: That's a great question. So, I started my career at NVIDIA, where I worked for eight years and very closely with Jensen Wong, who is, of course, now king of all technology with the AI revolution happening. And one of the key attributes at NVIDIA was intellectual honesty, which means that you understand things from first principles, you push back when you see something that's not right, you discuss things openly even if there is disagreement, and you try not to fool yourself with what you want to believe, rather you go after seeking truth.
And so that intellectual honesty left a good mark on me. And as a result, we follow the same thing here at Simbian.
2. Robust security frameworks are currently an urgent need for every company. How can AI agents be impactful in this regard and streamline business security interviews?
Ans: Security is very interesting because you are forced to innovate at a certain pace by your adversary. You don't live in isolation, and adversaries are using AI to automate all kinds of attacks. We have already seen deepfake videos where you can't tell whether they are real or not, and pretty soon, we will get to a point where you are in live video meetings, and you won't be able to tell whether the other end is a human or a bot.
And so, all the things that we take for granted will be up for a little bit of debate. What this means is that we need to do more on the defensive side because there will be more problems. People will go to an LLM, give a URL of a company, and that LLM or AI agent can find out all the weaknesses or vulnerabilities in your application and try to exploit it.
So, we need to strengthen our defense. Unfortunately, there are not enough people in security to do this. Today, more than 3.5 million jobs are vacant. Where can you get all these people needed for all this work?
One of the approaches to this problem is rather than solely relying on humans; maybe we can build AI agents that are powerful, smart, and intelligent that can augment human activities. So that's what Simbian is doing, and I believe that's the way forward.
3. What role does the security operator center, or SOC, play in tackling security threats and strategizing mitigation tactics?
Ans: The SOC is responsible for ensuring that any threats coming from outside or inside get monitored and remediated. So, for example, if one of your employees downloads some software that they should not download or tries to connect to a website that they should not connect to, the SOC sees traffic coming from the outside world that is known to be bad.
All of these things are currently happening and happening at scale. So, the SOC is responsible for triaging, investigating what happened, and remediating. It is the backbone of infrastructure security.
4. How does the Simbian GRC Agent work? How does it help organizations to manage emerging risks and stay compliant at the same time?
Ans: The Simbian GRC Agent automates some of the operational manual tasks that are currently done by humans. So, for example, if you try to assess the security of your organization, or if you try to assess the security of some other organization and you want to collect lots of evidence, or if you want to respond to an InfoSec questionnaire – our agent automates all of that.
5. Startups need to attract new customers and retain existing ones for sustainable growth. What strategies does Simbian employ for this purpose?
Ans: At Simbian, we differentiate ourselves on unique innovation. So, as I said, everybody is looking to make their security more efficient because there are lots of things happening, and organizations need to do more, but they just don't have the people.
At the same time, security budgets are not increasing at the same pace as the work is increasing. So, all CISOs are looking for efficiency. Our offering to our customers is that if you take our AI agent, you don't have to do anything. The AI Agents will start to produce results on Day One, and in 30 days, it will start to save money.
That's a very strong benefit to our customers, and that's how we attract them.
6. You focus on finding the right talent while establishing a dedicated team. How does such an approach contribute to organizational progression?
Ans: Smart people want to work with other smart people. And right now, everybody understands that AI holds the key to the future.
There is a lot of interest from a lot of people in Simbian, and security has always been a very exciting field because there are always new attacks, new methods coming, and new types of threats emerging. So, it's very dynamic. We do get a lot of applications from candidates who are interested in exploring security, or they are either driven by our purpose that we will build something that will secure all the hospitals and water plants that are getting attacked.
Or applicants just tend to be the kind of people who are very much familiar with computer security and have fun leaning into those things. They get to hack things and build things. So that's where we get our candidates.
7. Entrepreneurship is full of challenges. Can you highlight the major challenges you have encountered on your entrepreneurship journey and suggest specific methods to overcome them?
Ans: Yes. Entrepreneurship is, of course, full of all kinds of surprises. But you have to be resilient, and you have to believe in your cause.
So, for me, I'm driven by my desire to solve security. Security is no longer about protecting credit cards. It's much more than that. People are holding hospitals hostage. Ransomware gangs are doing nasty things with water plants. They are going after industrial infrastructure.
Attackers are tricking senior people into parting ways with their retirement money. So it's not about just doing something clever. It's about helping society in a way where I can make some difference. That's what drives me.
And if you believe in your cause, then you have to manage all the challenges that happen. It could be, for example, you want to hire somebody, but they chose to work for some other company because they got more money. And as a startup, you cannot pay a very high salary. Or perhaps you wanted to get a customer, but the customer, instead of deciding to purchase this month, slowed down their process by three months.
Challenges like these keep happening. But entrepreneurship certainly is very fulfilling.
8. How would you contemplate the future of security and AI agents? What possibilities can we expect in the cybersecurity sector in the coming years?
Ans: I think right now, if I were to see how much automation happens in security, this would be maybe 1 or 2 percent. People have tried to automate a little bit of security operations with traditional products like SOAR, but for that, you needed to write programs and scripts.
Most of the work in operations today is done by humans. In the future, most of the work will be done by AI agents, and humans will be there for review and management. That's the big transformation we are looking at.
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