Introducing the Newest Security Delta (HSD) Premium Partner: Red Trident

During the RSA Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, OT cybersecurity company Red Trident and Security Delta (HSD) announced that the company is joining the HSD Community as a Premium Partner. For this occasion, we spoke to Emmett Moore III, CEO of Red Trident, to get to know him and the company better and introduce them to the rest of the security cluster.

How would you describe Red Trident as a company?

Red Trident is an OT cybersecurity company that deploys defence strategies to thwart attackers who could threaten critical infrastructures or impact an organisation’s ability to operate. They specialize in deconstructing problems relating to security and creating sustainable solutions. Every solution is customized depending on the client’s environment and desired risk maturity level.

What sets Red Trident apart when it comes to security?

What really makes us different is the remediation. After a security company tells you what is wrong with your environment and how attackers can get to you, it’s often difficult to find the right solution for you. Not a lot of companies will help you solve that problem. At Red Trident, that’s what we specialize in. We’ve helped build and operate facilities, so we know really well how to effectively make changes and recommend different products to solve the problem. We really want to help our customer become secure and be able to maintain that security over time.

What was the main reason you wanted to become a Premium Partner of HSD?

Through our activities in the United States, we’ve gained a lot of knowledge by working with the national labs, the government, and many critical infrastructure sectors. By doing this we’ve helped our defence increase, we’re helping our national research institutes and universities better understand challenges in the field. We’re bringing our experience to both sides. In researching the HSD cluster and its partners, it seemed like a good channel to bring all that knowledge from the United States into the Netherlands as well.

What was it about the Netherlands that made you decide it was the right country to land in?

Customers in Europe reached out and said they wanted us to come out here. That kicked off our search on where to land in Europe. We looked at many different countries like Germany, France, Sweden and Ireland, and contacted the embassies in all those countries. The Dutch embassy pointed us towards the NFIA (Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency). Of all these countries, you guys made us feel most at home. We were introduced to different people, three days’ worth of meetings with partners and customers were set up; there was so much help. You guys really rolled out the red carpet, it was super helpful.

What are you hoping this Premium Partnership will bring Red Trident?

I’d say coming into Europe as a US brand is one of our biggest challenges. Brand recognition is something we care about. We’re very serious about being here, and we’re very serious about OT cybersecurity and helping customers with it. I’m hoping the HSD community as well as the bigger ecosystem will look at our partnership and see that we’re really out here trying to help develop OT cybersecurity. We want to be that partner.

What would you say Red Trident brings to the cluster by joining?

Our niche focus on OT cybersecurity. We focus on OT, a small part of cybersecurity, and we’re really good at what we do. We help the government, the military, and commercial parties understand and how best to defend these critical systems. Because we work in different sectors, we have a big diversity of understanding. We also help a lot with standards creation in the US, we hope to help the Netherlands and the great EU develop meaningful standards that can be adopted by all. We’d love to bring that knowledge over.

What do you view as the biggest challenge within the domain of security?

Probably integration. A lot of organizations have budget to buy technology, but less to train their people on anything other than technology. One of the biggest challenges is taking all these technologies you buy and getting them to work together, while also finding gaps that the technology do not cover in your security posture. We do a lot of assessments and are seeing huge deficiencies in coverage between the chosen solutions and what organizations expect to achieve.

Are there any specific collaborations you’re looking for?

We’re looking to collaborate with partners even outside of commercial businesses. We’d love to be part of an open dialogue on how to go about OT cybersecurity. How do we inform good policy and regulation for people to adopt meaningful cybersecurity over time? How do we help our customers? Not just the large corporations, but the small guys. We really want to focus on the medium size customers to small enterprises.

For example, the horticultural industry has adopted technology over the last 10-15 years and made huge operational improvements. If an attacker started targeting the horticultural industry and greenhouses, that’s a big deal. It takes a lot of time to replant plants and flowers. Sometimes I don’t think those people get the attention that they should, even though they represent a decent chunk of the market. That’s what we want to bring to the table: to help those medium-size companies adopt cybersecurity just like the big guys.

How would you describe Red Trident’s main mission statement?

We’re in the process of changing it, but currently it’s ‘run better’. Our focus is to pin down the goal of cybersecurity, which is something some organizations and cybersecurity practitioners forget about every now and then. The goal is to keep your business running as it was designed to be, with nothing malicious or unknown happening. To us that translates to ‘run better’. If you’re running better, you’re running secure, resilient, safe, and environmentally friendly.

Also read the article about the opening of Red Trident's new office at the HSD Campus!