Olivia A. Gallucci

This page explains how I picked the companies in The Optis, my three-part Black Hat USA 2021 series for Cyber Defense Magazine. I interviewed about sixty industry leaders from over forty companies and highlighted twenty-one whose growth I recommend watching. Looking for the companies themselves? Jump to the three articles.

Values

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Cybersecurity Club, RITSEC, inspired the metrics I used to analyze and rank companies. Specifically, I adopted RITSEC’s motto, “Security Through Community,” while examining each company’s ability to promote social good, inclusion, and innovation inside and outside of the company. I also checked public demos, open-source code, and publications to verify each company’s claims and gauge its communal reach, public contributions, and social good.

Cyber Defense Magazine

Given Cyber Defense Magazine’s awarding of unicorns (“a private company with a valuation of over $1 billion”) and that Olympic sailing occurred during Black Hat, I created a conceptual framework—The Optis Series—to highlight innovative and socially conscious companies at Black Hat USA 2021 (UserGuiding). The Optis Series contains three articles: bronze, silver, and gold. Like sailing, security is expensive and hard to break into. Some companies are working to change that.

Optis

For example, Clark Mills and Major Clifford McKay created the Optimist Dinghy (Opti) to ease financial and age barriers to sailing (The Optimist Dinghy 1947-2007, 2013). The Opti design was so successful that it became one of the most popular sailboats globally and has introduced millions to sailing.

Like Mills and McKay in sailing, the companies recognized by the Optis Series lowered barriers in their communities and industry. The definition of an optimist, “a person who is inclined to be hopeful and to expect good outcomes,” also fits the outlook of cybersecurity if these trends continue (Merriam-Webster, 2021).

Criteria

Here are the judging criteria:

• Highly differentiated and innovative by offering a unique product, technology, or technique.
• Demonstrates growth, ideally supported by numerical data like funding and sponsorship, acquisitions, and hiring trends.
• Active external enthusiasm and press.
• Practices embodied by “Security Through Community,” such as inclusion initiatives and a supportive company culture.
• Socially conscious contributions that are easily proved or demonstrated (e.g., open-source code, publications, blogs, events, and licensing choices).

Bronze companies met one or two criteria, silver companies three or four, and gold companies all five.

Final notes

I was very flexible with my interviews. I tried to get a full picture of each company’s values and tech. Lastly, I cited evidence whenever possible through public numerical data, blog posts, reports, publications, and product demos.

Read the series

I listed the three articles in the series below. These also appeared in the September 2021 edition of the magazine.

• Bronze Optis: Innovative Technologies at Black Hat
• Silver Optis: Innovative and Socially Conscious Technologies at Black Hat
• Gold Optis: Most Innovative and Socially Conscious Technologies at Black Hat

If you would like to read more of my work, please see my cybersecurity archive, or read Junior Black Teaming ISTS: Blockchain Explorer.