In our second episode of the Innovator Series, we chat with President of Elevate Security, Masha Sedova. Together with cofounder Robert Fly, the two former Salesforce security leaders have forged a new and exciting path with their startup, which focuses on managing the human element of cybersecurity risk.
Managing The Human Element of Cybersecurity Risk
Sloganizing their finding that “8% of users cause 80% of security incidents,” Elevate Security has built a platform dedicated to helping identify those few users in your organization who suffer a greater susceptibility to phishing, malware, risky browsing, and safe data handling.
To address the challenge of employee-related security breaches, Elevate addresses employee risk factors by identifying high-risk individuals based on employee security behaviors, application access, and attacker tactics. Built-in playbooks help address risk by applying tailored interventions and safeguards through smarter identity decisions, employee engagement, and tailored controls. This approach significantly reduces the risk of employee error within an organization.
Now in its sixth year, Elevate is finding success in some of the largest healthcare and financial organizations in the US. Sedova is no stranger to this space—she previously ran the Trust Engagement team within Salesforce, a group concerned with the human element of security.
Years of data collection by Elevate has yielded insights into not only the behavior of the various employee groups within an organization—technical, customer facing, etc—but a risk factor associated with attack rate. Not every user enjoys the same level of external risk. Customer Service and R&D departments are targeted at a higher rate, and subsets of these groups are hit even harder, necessitating tighter controls and support.
In our 16 minute conversation with Masha, she reveals the motivating factors and inspiration for starting Elevate, and shares her outlook on the essential realm of human factor in enterprise security.