6 Cybersecurity Tools You’ll Need to Know About in 2019

It doesn’t take such a deep dive into 2018’s most important tech trends to understand how vital cybersecurity will be in the coming year. With the idea of cybersecurity taking a central role in US electoral politics and the world’s most sophisticated platforms demonstrating their inability to thwart savvy hackers, 2019 and the plethora of events scheduled for the year are in a precarious position.

Whether it’s maintaining transparent and reliable voting systems, combatting DDoS attacks at the G20 summit and WTO conference, or even protecting a corporation’s new batch of smart contracts, proactive solutions are necessary in an era when cybercrime seems to reach a new all-time high every few months.

In this vein, smart IT experts and even regular users would be wise to keep an eye on these up-and-comers in the sector. A place on this list means that the company has identified a crucial area of vulnerability in the status quo and develops a unique, airtight solution.

1. Safeblocks

Virtually every industry is working on incorporating blockchain, which has a penchant for creating more cost-efficient services hosted in a decentralized fashion, or at least using decentralized elements. Applications built on blockchain are known as dApps, and Safeblocks is helping to make them more secure.

Generally, dApps are built on smart contracts, which are essentially if/then statements that use the trustless ledger to automate business flows. These are usually audited for potential loopholes or exploits before they go live. However, just because a smart contract has been audited doesn’t mean it’s hack-proof.

Safeblocks’s Firewall offers real-time protection for smart contract users as well, adding another layer of protection on top of the smart contract. This essentially stops the flow of unauthorized “traffic” — or, in this case, transactions. With this solution, smart contract owners can enjoy greater control with policies and exceptions that they build and manage even after the smart contract is deployed. Safeblocks will continuously validate transactions based on rules you dynamically set. What results is a more cost-effective and efficient smart contract defense apparatus.

2. Incapsula

Incapsula is another leading cybersecurity company offering a truly impressive array of cloud-based security and website acceleration services. With a small adjustment to your DNS — no hardware or software required — you can access the entirety of Imperva’s solution including DDoS protection, website security, content delivery, and load balancing services.

Over 3 million clients trust Imperva Incapsula for their comprehensive and lightweight suite of web services, and especially the ability to create custom application delivery processes that reduce overhead significantly.

The near universal applicability of Incapsula’s solution is reinforced by industry recognition of the company, and it has now led the Gartner Magic Quadrant Web Application Firewall contest for five years in a row.

3. HoxHunt

Though new viruses and bugs are a big part of the threat facing our digital universe in 2019, hackers are also targeting employees and negligent (or simply unaware) retail PC users with convincing social engineering tricks that are only getting more sophisticated.

HoxHunt recognizes that the vast majority (over 90%) of breaches are due to human error, and acts as an additional security team member by constantly measuring employee awareness and behavior to its simulated threats — phishing emails, prompts to install potentially viral software and more.

Employees are rewarded for identifying components of real and simulated attacks via HoxHunt, creating a gamified user experience that helps detect gaps in personal threat response as well as company-wide vulnerabilities. The platform learns the preferences of individuals (hobbies, interests, relevant dates, etc.) and helps them learn to defend against breaches that target them directly. Administered via a lightweight browser extension, HoxHunt’s platform for positive reinforcement and nurturing defense-minded behavior is uniquely effective.

4. PerimeterX

AI and automation are near and dear to the tech ecosystem, but unfortunately, hackers and fraudsters can also employ the services of bot networks for their own purposes.

Automated attacks are like the seafloor trawling nets used by commercial fishermen to pick the ocean’s “lowest-hanging fruit” and have a surprising success rate even though they don’t tailor their attacks to specific targets. PerimeterX is the answer to the growing sophistication of these bot attacks, with a system that uses machine learning to identify behavior that is least likely to represent human action.

Attacks that don’t trigger security mechanisms are some of the most malicious and filtering them out with PerimeterX is crucial for companies like Puma, Wix and Zillow. These include account abuse, checkout abuse (limited run item scalping), content scraping bots and more.

5. WhiteSource

For a company that seeks to use open-source software for its own purposes, the process of picking a harmonizing array of software and maintaining it requires significant efforts.

Open-source installations are amalgamations of several complementary pieces and require tracking, management, and reporting at the very least. WhiteSource automates these processes, but also makes open-source component selection, real-time alerts on vulnerable points and bottlenecks, and policy enforcement entirely automatic.

High-profile companies around the world rely on WhiteSource to nurture them through every step of the software development life cycle and reinforce their software stacks onwards behind the scenes. The increasing push towards open-source solutions in recent years will only continue into 2019, and enterprises need a way to effectively juggle their open-source components with as little effort as possible.

6. Cloud Management Suite

With its “patch everything” mantra, Cloud Management Suite (CMS) uses automated and pre-built patch queries to the most common software to significantly reduces the administrative burden of systems management.

Users are able to effortlessly control every aspect of their IT infrastructure, including connected devices, threat monitoring, compliance management, power management and two-factor authentication.

Hosted entirely in the cloud, CMS can be deployed instantly and used remotely, so that anyone can effortlessly keep all the devices and software used by their business up-to-date.

Upgrade Your Protection

As fraudsters become more creative, the cybersecurity sector must keep pace or risk a dire outcome. Thankfully, companies like those on this list have designed groundbreaking solutions that seek to head off cyber threats before they manifest. In 2019 and beyond, watch for these names to rise above the rest as the battle for a safer web rages on.

6 Cybersecurity Tools You’ll Need to Know About in 2019 was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.