The principal characteristics of Michel Paschalides, Founder of Cybernis’ personality is extreme curiosity and “friendly transgression”. One can say his curiosity and desire to acquire new knowledge has brought him a lot of satisfaction in terms of formal academic studies as well as continued learning of all sorts. But most of all, it has taught him the importance of applying knowledge and turning obtained skill sets and experience into business value for his employers and clients. Michel has from day one led Cybernis through his curiosity and constant desire to challenge status quo and to seek improvements. His inspiration stems from various biological immune systems and the desire to simulate these in the domain of cyber security. He has a very clear idea of the direction and purpose of the company and its solutions, and not least how these solutions will bring value to the customers. The clear vision of creating “a safe internet for everyone” gathers the team around one common main goal which the associated objectives and targets point to. Michel is the visionary and the one behind the technical design and development of the Reflex software suite.
"Cybernis NAVIGA and REFLEX provide the opportunity for those that take on the solutions to make a real difference to their end to end cyber defensive capability."
“For long we have known that cyber-crime represents an enormous challenge to companies, organizations and individuals,” says Michel. “The problem is that we have been over- focused on protecting the perimeter and our internal systems with much less effort on building resilience and recovery capacity.” In other words, cyber security needs to be looked in a different way – which is exactly what Cybernis is all about. “We want to create a safe internet for everyone! For myself and my colleagues behind Reflex this is a noble and tangible vision which glues us together as a team, sets a clear direction and provides us with the purpose and the motivation to succeed.”
For Michel the thinking around the Reflex approach started as a combination of two independent events spaced in time, but yet connected. “Some 15 years back, I was developing Cybernis Naviga, a security governance solution that proposes dynamic strategic, functional, operational and technical security management indicators in management information dashboards,” he explains. “Naviga was collecting all known data breaches so to estimate the financial consequences in case a data breach occurred in an organization. In other words, it provided decision-makers quality information in terms of business risk and the ability to make informed decisions related to these risks.” On the second occasion, Michels’ father was unfortunately diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and was treated by several specialists and oncologists. During the treatment one of the oncologists taught him the fascinating but cruel nature of the HIV virus. Essentially, every virus has pores through which it can breathe and be fed. “Gaining this knowledge, I immediately started to think how this principle could be elevated as a way of protecting information systems,” says Michel. “The principle inspired from the HIV virus immune system is Deflect, which also is a potential solution for protecting information systems against various intrusions. Such a solution is based on the idea of hiding the principal system from intruders, whereas a replica is exposed to unknown or non- controllable internet hosts and websites.”
The understanding of this phenomenal organic system made Michel visualize an early version of what later would become Reflex, which is addressing the unknown threats through a new way of looking at cyber security. With the billions of data records breached, and new breaches revealed by the day, it is obvious that we are not asking the right security questions. Cybernis is changing this by deploying solutions which act like the human immune system. In other words, Cybernis and its solutions do indeed represent a paradigm-shift in cyber security! “We firmly believe that the expanded Reflex software suite will fill additional gaps in the market, create synergies and bring considerable value to customers seeking to utilize internet in a safe manner,” adds Michel.
“It is with this mindset that Reflex was developed. The Beta version of the first Reflex product is slated for a June 2020 release. It will be a product specifically created to combat Ransomware. It is expected that by September 2020 the product will be fully available on a B2B platform available to businesses worldwide. Individual consumers will be able to procure a distinct version of the Reflex Boomerang in early 2021. During this same time, Cybernis will continue to develop and expand its product offerings with software that will most certainly eliminate even further gaps in today’s cyber security offerings.”IE
Michel Paschalides
Founder Cybernis
Cybernis is a privately-owned limited company founded in 2009. Headquartered in North West England with business operations in Montreux, Switzerland, we’ve spent a great deal of our time researching, innovating and inventing with good people around us. It is a very rewarding place to be.