Arming the Defense with Hyper Cyber Visibility

While growing up in the Fort Monmouth community, I remember my Dad, a research scientist at CECOM, often mentioning the names of various US Defense programs. It struck me that these program names usually evoked some vivid, action-oriented task: Unite, Defend, Protect, and so on. This was not by accident: The DoD keeps a terminology program that is based on the notion that “words matter.”

So, when our TAG Cyber team met last week with the leadership team from Conquest Cyber, I immediately recognized that familiar cadence in their solution naming: Defend, Evaluate, Inspect, and so on. Sure enough – on hearing the details of their cybersecurity products and services, it was clear that the defense community would be an enthusiastic customer. Let me share what we learned:

“We focus on adaptive cyber risk management,” explained Conquest Cyber’s Chairman and President, Jeff Engle. “We are mission-focused, and serve the cyber resilience needs of organizations in critical infrastructure, government agencies, and the defense community.” Engle, who earned enough awards while in US Special Operations to fill a wall, is also the author of a book called “All the War They Want.”

The Conquest offering is an integrated package of products and services that combine to provide security, compliance, and contextualized information to key decision makers. Several times during our briefing, Engle held up his mobile to show us how easy it was for his customers to access their compliance and security data. One of the terms we heard during the briefing was “radical transparency,” and this seems to fit the solution set.

The first product offerings from Conquest Cyber is called ARMED. This platform gives Conquest customers a single dashboard for real-time visibility, notifications, and control of their entire cybersecurity program. It is intended to replace data screens from over 40 separate tools with one common graphic visualization that looks like something that a battle-tested operational commander would like.

The second offering is called SCYOPS which supports compliance, maturity, and effectiveness for strategic cyber operations. Obviously, the SCYOPS solution works well in a government context, but it is also excellent for highly regulated industries such as energy, finance, and healthcare. Engle explained that a growing segment of his customer base exists in in the critical infrastructure sector – and this is not surprising.

Conquest also includes an impressive range of managed services, cyber risk advisory services, and support for digital transformation. These services are supported by a growing team of about 100 Conquest employees, and the company appears to be growing at a strong rate. With new headquarters in Nashville, this firm looks to be capable and well-positioned to meet the needs of the customers it is targeting.

As Conquest expands its market into additional sectors, the challenge – as with every firm expanding its market – will be to leverage its experience in government and critical infrastructure. This is not always an easy task, as many defense firms will attest. But we believe Conquest is well-positioned, since cyber expertise in military, government, and infrastructure is so highly valued in other sectors.

Regardless of your sector, you should consider contacting Engle to hear more about this interesting company. Microsoft GCC High vendors might be particularly interested in a Conquest partnership. And as always, please let us know what you think.