HyperQube launches ‘cyber range as a service’

D.C.-based cybersecurity startup HyperQube officially opened for business and launched its service offerings earlier this month at the Northern Virginia Security Conference BSidesNOVA.

We’re open for business. HyperQube enables technologists the ability to look to the future and explore infrastructures in a risk-free environment. More on our launch: https://t.co/NtxwJ6P1uk #BSidesNoVA pic.twitter.com/QlkMveR0Bu

— HyperQube (@HyperQubeTech) March 2, 2019

The Mach37 cybersecurity accelerator graduate company created a product that makes it easy to build an exact copy of any IT infrastructure for enterprises, small businesses and academic institutions, a press release states.

These virtualized test environments can be built in minutes, while alternatives like VMware can take weeks or longer, and then can be easily modified, reused, and shared, the company’s PR rep Kelly Miller told Technical.ly. Companies can use the solution to unleash viruses and see exactly how their network will respond – or see how aesthetic tweaks and software updates impact a system in real-time before they are deployed.

The company was founded in 2017 and is led by Craig Stevenson, a cybersecurity expert who previously worked as the principal cyber engineer and director of cyber training at Raytheon. He is also an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, where he teaches introduction to cyber operations as part of the graduate program. Stevenson has been CEO of the company since joining the Mach37 accelerator in the fall of 2017, where he got support in identifying and building a sustainable business model. He has gained access to the MACH37 Stars Mentors Network throughout the life of his company since graduating.

“HyperQube recognized the growing need for a scalable and reusable virtualized environment to test network boundaries,” Stevenson said in a statement. “It’s exciting to see our partners explore the limits of all that our software can provide from superior security hygiene to speedy network-wide update deployment.”

HyperQube partners with Cisco and Forrester for its testing, deployment and virtual infrastructure needs.

The startup hosted an international Capture The Flag (CTF) hacking competition in November 2018 where it let more than 150 hackers into its IT infrastructure to retrieve a code word just to prove they did it. Hackers from all over the world, including some from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, and Harvard University, participated. Stevenson offered up some lessons from the exercise where he also explained that HyperQube’s infrastructure made it through the hack unscathed.

Coined a “cyber range as a service,” HyperQube gives technologists the capabilities to explore infrastructures in a risk-free environment without harming the main IT infrastructure.