Australian Security Company Makes U.S. Launch With Focus On SIEM

An Australian security company entered the U.S. market Thursday with a plan to both disrupt and complement established security vendors in the threat management market.

Huntsman Security, as it will be known in the U.S., offers a portfolio that includes a broad range of Security Information Event Management (SIEM) technology that provides real-time insight into preventing cyberattacks.

The U.S. launch of the company also includes the global release of the Huntsman Unified Console, which aggregates the output of SIEM environments from multiple vendors, including Splunk, Hewlett-Packard ArcSight, Q1 Labs and Huntsman Security's own technology, into a single dashboard for a consolidated view of enterprise threats.

[Related: Verizon Report: Top 9 Causes Of Data Breaches]

Tier-3, as it is known in Australia, already is established on a global scale, including in Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan. The company is recognized for developing a patented behavior anomaly detection technology.

As it breaks into the U.S. market, CEO Peter Woollacott said the company will compete with vendors such as AppSense; Q1 Labs; McAfee, part of Intel Security; and Splunk but also will collaborate with them as it works to aggregate their solutions in a single pane of glass.

"I think, in one sense, we're definitely competing with them; no question about that," Woollacott said. "But, in another sense we're complementing them. ... Being able to complement the capabilities of those technologies and give a global view of what's happening at the enterprise is a significant step forward in the threat management process."

Woollacott said that approach is especially important as the SIEM market evolves from a more simple compliance process to a demand from clients for real-time actionable information. Many offerings today struggle with the volume of information and speed required to meet that demand, he said, but aggregation helps remediate that problem.

"There's no question that cybersecurity and cyberthreats are an increasing problem that we're increasingly struggling to battle with, both in terms of the amount of information that we'll need to make decisions upon and the speed with which we have to make those decisions, and the inclusive risks to organizations that those lead to," Woollacott said.

"SIEM is struggling to keep up in lots of ways because what people want now is ... resolution, they want remediation. ... Increasingly, they're looking for real-time capabilities and real-time security and compliance reporting," he continued.

Woollacott said the company's go-to-market approach is strongly built around MSPs, which account for 40 percent of sales in its existing regions. Huntsman has established an office in San Francisco and has been having discussions with several U.S. partners, he said.

In particular, Woollacott said the company is looking to add security specialists that can guide clients through SIEM technology and then provide recommendations to prioritize and resolve problems.

"That is a major channel for us," Woollacott said. "I think that will be the major channel. I think that will become a major channel for the provision of security monitoring full-stop as people battle with an increasing number of threats and few expert people to manage those threats so people turn to manage service providers to assist them."

PUBLISHED APRIL 16, 2015