Smarttech247 Group plc (LON:S247) Chief Executive Officer Raluca Saceanu caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss what the company does, what’s driving demand, highlights from 2023, opportunities, and what investors can expect going forward.
Q1: First off, could you just provide us with a brief overview of what Smarttech247 does?
A1: We are a global cybersecurity organisation, and we help secure some of the world’s largest companies.
We specialise in complex security operations and we are focused on helping our clients reduce their risk. This is done with our platform which is called VisionX which is an AI-enhanced MDR platform, MDR stands for Managed Detection and response.
We are ISO 9001 and ISO 2701 certified and we were recently awarded ‘Cybersecurity Company of the Year’ as well as Top 50 Tech Company by Deloitte.
Just to give you a little bit more information the business and a little about our clients. Our biggest clients are multinationals, Fortune 500 and Fortune 120 companies from a wide variety of industries including financial, manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and many others.
Our core product that I mentioned earlier is VisionX, this is the prefect blend of people, process, and technology. Our capability is led by human expertise and this is quite important to note, cybersecurity is a complex industry and we have to deal with thousands of cyber incidents daily.
So, we leverage our platform, which has in-built automation but at the end of the day, humans are the ones that hold the hands of our customers throughout their security journey. It’s important to note that although we use artificial intelligence and automation, the human aspect and the human layer of our capability is crucial.
When you look at process, we’ve invested heavily in creating a model that is based on quality and operational excellence, and there’s no margin for error in this industry which makes quality and the way we run our operations really important at the core of everything that we do.
In terms of technology, we underpin people in process with the MDR platform which enables faster detection and better response for our customers. So, our platform sits on top of existing security investments that our clients make and to put it simply, it enhances them.
Q2: Cybersecurity has grown massively as an industry, what are some of the challenges organisations are regularly facing and what’s driving demand for your products?
A2: This industry has grown rapidly and there are no signs of slowing down, and this is primarily driven by the escalating threats that organisations are facing.
So, if we were to summarise the key challenges, there would be threefold:
One, the sophistication of cyber-attacks. We are seeing attackers using advanced malware, sophisticated ransomware, and really well-crafted phishing techniques. There is a growing concern that more and more cyber criminals are leveraging artificial intelligence and particularly, to create social engineering attacks that are difficult to defend against.
The industry is incredibly worried about the prevalence of deepfakes as well which are now more adopted in the types of attacks that I mentioned earlier. We’re not just looking at the sophistication of attacks but also the rate at which, for example, the number of vulnerabilities is growing year on year, and it’s quite alarming to see.
We’re seeing organisations being completely overwhelmed with a high count of vulnerabilities that they need to fix, and it really is impossible for them to address everything at once. So, more and more companies are seeking help in managing and prioritising these vulnerabilities.
That’s the first problem.
The second problem and the second challenge is that the cybersecurity ecosystem is becoming more challenging. What I mean by that is that we are seeing a lot of organisations with complex ecosystems facing more breaches, this is related to third parties. So, every organisation has an ecosystem of partners, suppliers, and vendors, and the larger this ecosystem is, the more cybersecurity risks it poses.
There’s a very interesting report that was recently released by the World Economic Forum and it states that 41% of organisations that have suffered a material incident in the past 12 months say that it was caused by a third party.
The third challenge is the massive skill shortage that we’re facing. Companies cannot find the necessary talent to deal with the cybersecurity challenges and when they do, they can’t retain them.
Q3: You must be delighted with the business growth and progress from 2023, could you talk us through some of the highlights?
A3: We are holding a very strong position within the cybersecurity market, and we’ve had a steady growth in 2023.
We announced various deals last year including a $3 million order with a customer in the automotive space.
We also announced a multi-year contract worth nearly £400,000 over 2 years with a global organisation in the aviation industry.
In October of last year, we won a tender with an existing government of Ireland department client and this was worth approximately €400,000 over 2 years.
Furthermore, our client AutoNation, a Fortune 150 US company has extended their existing contract with us for a further 3 years, this was really as a result of a very successful partnership with us.
Towards the end of the year, we also announced that we signed a new deal with a global pharmaceuticals solutions organisation, this organisation is based out of the US and this deal was approximately worth $900,000 over 3 years, this is for our VisionX MDR capability.
Q4: You have got ambitious plans to grow revenue and product in 2024, where do you see the opportunities and what can investors expect from Smarttech247?
A4: Yes, we are looking at expanding our operations in North America as well as in the UK, they are both existing markets. We are also looking at new geographies such as the Middle East and we’re very excited about the fact that we’re currently evaluating various companies with a view to acquiring them. So, M&A is a strong element of our scaling strategy.
We also want to grow our business by engaging with large strategic tech partners across different sectors . We’ve secured numerous partnerships over the last 2 years and we’re continuing with that, these tech partnerships are really important to us and we’re constantly exploring opportunities to expand our solutions and diversify our portfolio.
From an innovation perspective, we have recently announced the latest feature leveraging artificial intelligence that will be added to our VisionX platform. This feature is an AI assistant called Aio, and this will help our clients understand their security posture faster and it will also enable them to reduce the risk, just simply by having better and quicker access to valuable security data. Not only that, but it will also help them remediate gaps and provide added context around security weaknesses.
One of the other features that we’re looking at is in relation to what I mentioned earlier, understand the security gaps that third parties pose in your environment. We’re also working on creating more features for our other products and we have a really exciting roadmap ahead.
Right now, we’re all very excited about our upcoming conference Zero Day Con which is taking place on March 6th in Dublin, and we’re expecting over 500 senior executives in attendance. We have speakers from the FBI, NCIS, from very large organisations such as Microsoft and Aptiv, and we’re really really looking forward to welcoming everyone at the conference.
