Atalanta reckons its Argo tool can spot cyber holes before state-backed hackers turn infrastructure into a smoking crater.
Russia’s satellite hack on the day it invaded Ukraine in 2022 knocked out thousands of modems across Ukraine and Europe. Now, cybersecurity outfit Atalanta has released Argo, an AI-assisted product aimed at closing the gap Moscow gleefully exploited.
According to The Associated Press Argo includes technology used to help secure Viasat’s satellite communications network after Russia’s attack. Security types think it could give defenders a new weapon in the increasingly grubby cyberwarfare theatre.
Atalanta says the system uses what it calls “software understanding”, mixing complex maths with artificial intelligence to inspect software and internet-connected systems more deeply.
The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown how quickly hackers can turn boring infrastructure into a national headache. This summer, several government agencies warned that Iranian hackers had been prodding water and wastewater systems, along with other critical infrastructure.
Atalanta CEO and co-founder Anjana Rajan told The Associated Press: “The tools and techniques of yesterday do not scale for today and ‘software understanding’ is going to be the path forward for anyone building a system of consequence for the United States.”
Rajan said Argo was meant for systems where failure is more than an IT ticket and a sheepish email from support. That includes satellite networks, utilities and the kind of public infrastructure politicians only notice after someone has already broken it.
