UpGuard Inc. is a cybersecurity startup company based in Mountain View, California that gives companies a score based on their security posture.
Contents
History
UpGuard, formerly ScriptRock, is an Australian IT company based in Mountain View, California. While working at investment firm Colonial First State. Company founders Mike Baukes and Alan Sharp-Paul, met on-the-job in Sydney, Australia. Sharp-Paul was a web developer and Baukes was a systems administrator. After spending years in financial services in Australia and the UK, the pair developed a system for corporations to understand their business software portfolios and the consequent risk of breaches by third-party infiltrators, founded an independent consulting firm. Their innovative system allowed for the automation of typical cybersecurity procedures, allowing for total analyses in all relevant servers and software applications.
Product
The company’s product helps IT departments understand how their various systems are operating. The product quickly pinpoints differences in configurations on servers and desktops, comparing states across systems and over time. The UpGuard platform includes a scanner that evaluates exposure of publicly facing web interfaces and determines the risk of breaches. This is augmented by data analysis about an internal network from sources including existing security platforms and software services via APIs or from Windows Remote Management.
That is rolled up into a number – the Cybersecurity Threat Assessment Report (CSTAR) – a numerical score representing how vulnerable a network is to cyber attacks. In addition to the number, the platform enables customers to take remedial action where they detect vulnerabilities.