Israeli cybersecurity pioneer aims to disrupt Hong Kong market with cloud-based services

Cybersecurity start-up Cato Networks, an Israeli firm now targeting Hong Kong, aims to disrupt the enterprise cybersecurity market by offering network security services via the cloud, the company said this week.

Such a move could make physical security devices like firewalls, which filter out unwanted traffic, redundant and better protect companies against external threats like ransomware, chief executive Shlomo Kramer told the South China Morning Post.

The kind of devices that enterprises use can no longer protect them from security threats, especially at a time when business is conducted so “fluidly” from various locations rather than being restricted to an office environment, he said.

“There’s no office anymore, no fixed location. But organisations are still trying to protect this fluid business with physical appliances. It’s like trying to plug different holes in a huge [canvas]. There is a mismatch here,” said the man considered one of the pioneers of Israeli cybersecurity.

Kramer invented one of the world’s first commercially available pieces of firewall software at his previous company, Check Point Software Technologies.