Palindrome Technologies: Securing Emerging Technologies with Confidence

Peter Thermos, President & CTO

In an era of rapidly developing and connected technologies, hackers and their methodologies are continually gaining sophistication, leading to costly and damaging data breaches. According to a Forbes report, there were 2,216 data breaches and over 53,000 cybersecurity incidents reported in 65 countries in 2018. While organizations are striving to adopt new technologies such as IoT, blockchain, and 5G, to steer ahead of the market, they need to be tightly secured to deal with the rising security threats. However, most lack the required skill set to verify security and ensure secure closed service field operations of the latest technologies. This is where Palindrome Technologies steps in with a simple yet challenging goal to help enterprises be secure while adopting new technologies. The company’s key offerings include security research and analysis on emerging technologies and SecDevOps, network security assessments and threat monitoring, application security assessments, breach assessments, HITRUST certification, and incident response and forensics.

A seasoned cybersecurity veteran with over two decades of experience in information security and assurance, Peter Thermos leads the company as President & CTO and spearheads the technological direction and vision of the company to support customer requirements and strategic evolution. With Thermos at the helm, Palindrome Technologies has gained prominence as an industry pioneer in delivering applied cybersecurity research and analysis for companies focusing on securing emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT, V2X, smart cities, SDN/NFV, among others. It is one of the few labs in the US to have worked with major wireless carriers on the third generation partnership project (3GPP), fourth generation (4G) since 2008, and the upcoming fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems. “Our prime directives have been to anticipate threats and vulnerabilities inherent in emerging technologies and help organizations strengthen their security posture and operate with confidence. In a nutshell, ‘we break code because we care,’” says Thermos.

As the emerging technologies should integrate into a client’s existing infrastructure with a demonstrably strong security posture, Palindrome’s team works closely with telecommunication carriers, energy, and healthcare providers and government organizations to manage the associated threats that come along with adopting new technologies. The team also provides the means to secure these technologies and manage residual risk. “Through our customers’ challenging requirements, we have been given the unique position to be an extension of their organization and become one of the handful security research and consulting firms to perform security testing on emerging technologies,” adds Thermos. In short, Palindrome is not just a consulting firm; they serve as an extension of the clients’ teams. The team not only tries to understand client requirements for a given project but also aligns the expertise with the client’s strategic goals. This ‘palindromic relationship’ of mutual trust along with the past performance and expertise is distinctive in the industry.

Our prime directives have been to anticipate threats and vulnerabilities inherent in emerging technologies and help organizations strengthen their security posture and operate with confidence

Palindrome Technologies was founded with the ideology of streamlining security operations and assessments for telecommunication and government sectors. One of the core values of the company is to “Inspire confidence” in their customers. “We recognize that we are also consumers of the many technologies we are helping secure. As such, we strive to ensure that these technologies maintain the proper security posture as if they were used by our families and loved ones. This cultural attribute is assimilated and exercised by every team member and is one of our differentiating factors. It’s our passion,” notes Thermos.

The Ultimate Security Framework

Having started as a consulting and research firm, Palindrome Technologies today caters its services to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries including education, finance, and government sectors. Palindrome’s service portfolio comprises three core service lines: security research and analysis of emerging technologies, service provider assurance (e.g., telecommunication carriers, energy, financial, and healthcare service providers) and enterprise security advisory services. In addition, Palindrome’s lab accreditation and collaboration with industry standard organizations such as IEEE, GSMA, and CTIA allow them to provide device security certification services tailored to product manufacturers.

Thermos points out emerging technologies improve operations and create new service opportunities for organizations, but simultaneously they introduce intricacies that augment an organization’s threat surface. Thus, securing them requires keen insight into the inner workings including hardware, firmware, provisioning, management, and signaling protocols along with understanding how they support an organization’s operations and services holistically. As such, Palindrome’s team employs a multidimensional security analysis approach to evaluate the security of emerging technologies and provide remediation support. For example, in one of its current projects, Palindrome is assisting a large telecommunication provider secure their 5G deployment. This effort requires working with multiple product vendors and evaluating end-to-end controls, from SIM cards to devices (i.e., subscriber handsets, network extenders, vehicle OBD) to core network elements and provisioning systems. The security analysis includes, but is not limited to hardware, software, management, and network APIs and signaling protocols. Similar assurance projects in the last 12 months included the evaluation of technologies and services that support smart cities and the power grid. These efforts require a keen understanding of various technologies and close collaboration with operators and vendors to ensure security controls are properly implemented and allow the customers to operate with confidence. “We leverage the knowledge gained from these more complex environments to enhance the services we provide to our enterprise customers,” explains Thermos.

Toward a Secure Future

Over the years, Palindrome has been immensely fortunate to work with clients that entrust them in evaluation of their flagship projects, rendering the opportunity to gain insight into new technologies and anticipate the future transformation of their operations and infrastructure. In the long run, the company is looking forward to expanding its team and opening branch offices in New York, and Dallas. The coming 12 months hold an exciting path forward as Palindrome strives to become one of the leading organizations in securing emerging technologies. In addition, the company’s team collaborates with academic research labs including the internet real-time (IRT) lab at Columbia University and center for security, reliability, and trust (SnT) at the University of Luxemburg to explore the intricacies of emerging architectures to anticipate potential threats and vulnerabilities. “We are also working closely with GSMA and CTIA to be recognized as a certified security certification lab for telecommunication equipment and IoT. We take pride in our work, which consequently impacts billions of ‘netizens’ every day,” concludes Thermos.