As a Singapore-based cybersecurity startup, StrongKeep is focused on helping SMBs protect themselves and meet compliance requirements, without the cost or complexity of enterprise tools.
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Gaurav Keerthi, CEO and Founder of StrongKeep
While large enterprises continue to invest in newer and more comprehensive cybersecurity platforms, SMBs struggle to keep the pace not only because they lack the budget, but also the talent needed to manage their cybersecurity. Many SMBs continue to rely on basic cybersecurity protection that often is not sufficient enough to deal with today’s sophisticated cyber threats.
In Southeast Asia, SMBs continue to be heavily targeted by criminals, with many struggling to recover from cyberattacks and experiencing heavy losses to the business. Statistics from cybersecurity vendors show SMBs remain one of most exploited businesses in the region when it comes to ransomware, with many also ending up paying the ransom because they don’t have sufficient backup or recovery capabilities.
This has led to an increased demand for managed security services providers (MSSPs_ in the region, with more cybersecurity vendors also customizing their solutions to support this increased demand. MSSPs are also reevaluating their offerings to make their services more affordable for SMBs, without having to compromise solutions.
However, there is still a segment in SMBs that remain vulnerable because they cant even afford some of the MSSP offerings. These include micro SMBs (MSMBs) or even businesses with headcounts that are less than 50 employees, like a law firm for example. These companies have valuable information and if compromised, could end up with huge problems.
This is where Gaurav Keerthi, CEO and Founder of StrongKeep is hoping to make a difference. A Singapore-based cybersecurity startup, StrongKeep is focused on helping SMBs protect themselves and meet compliance requirements, without the cost or complexity of enterprise tools.
Unlike a managed service or consulting firm, StrongKeep is a self-served platform built for SMBs that don’t have a security team or an IT manager. That makes it fast to set up and affordable, giving smaller businesses the same level of protection larger companies pays much more for.
“The way it works for cybersecurity normally depends on how much a company pays to get protection. For smaller businesses, especially does with solo entrepreneurs and such, they have nothing. And ironically, it’s the smallest companies that have the least cybersecurity that are the most affected by cyber attack. For the big enterprises, they’re able to recover within some time. But for the smaller guys, it can be quite catastrophic to some extent,” Keerthi said in an interview with CRN Asia.
According to Keerti, StrongKeep “exists to fill that gap in the market where the industry isn’t really concerned with smaller businesses.” Specifically, he explained that while smaller businesses are all aware on the importance of cybersecurity, they have no actual way to solve the problem for themselves, which is a horrible place to be in.
“You know there’s a problem and you know that you’re at risk. But you can’t do anything about it. So, StrongKeep sits in that space,” Keerthi said.
Referring to this gap as cyber inequity or the unfairness in distribution of cybersecurity, Keerthi is on a mission with StrongKeep to make cybersecurity available for all small businesses by leveraging AI.
Cybersecurity for SMBs
For Keerthi, AI has made it cheaper to not just build cybersecurity but also deploy it as the technology allows them to develop something that is within a price point of smaller businesses.
The cybersecurity startup, with a product built primarily and hosted on AWS, relies heavily on AI productivity tools and incorporating agentic capabilities into customer-facing experiences.
“If you’re going to rebuild cybersecurity to become affordable, you have to really step back. So, the way that most people do it is they kind of take an enterprise tool and then they cut a few costs here and there and kind of resell it with the service around it. That doesn’t really work because it still becomes very expensive. You’re paying for consultant’s time and it doesn’t really fit the needs of a small law firm or accounting firm,” he explained.
Keerthi believes that there are only a areas in which a business can struggle in cybersecurity. This includes downloading malicious software or clicking on phishing links; using weak passwords or having credentials stolen; using older versions of Windows or unpatched software and unconfigured servers.
“So, those are things that can go wrong and we cover it by bundling in an anti-malware protection, which is EDR, an Endpoint Detection Response Tool as well as bundle in a DNS firewall. Again, philosophically, if you think about a smaller company, deploying a hardware device into their network is troublesome. They’re not going to maintain it. They’re not going to know what to do with it. And then once the service ends, they’re going to be left with a box, which nobody knows how to do it. So, we decided to go with a software firewall. It’s called DNS firewall. The other thing is that we have a credential manager. So, its passwords, credentials, multi-factor authentication, etc., all bundled in. And the fourth thing is we do server scans. So, as part of the onboarding process, we’ll scan all of your hardware-facing servers the way an attacker would,” he explained.
To ensure small businesses can leverage these tools, it has to be cheap. Keerthi used the analogy of Ikea, whereby products like furniture are not simple and affordable and get the job done.
“The analogy I use is IKEA. If you have a lot of money, you go and get a carpenter. The carpenter will come in and measure your conference room, cut down an American walnut tree and make you a beautiful table. All the guests will be, wow, this is a very beautiful table. You don’t have money, you go to IKEA. This table has never met a carpenter or a tree in its life. It’s like plastic and wood chips squashed together with four legs you have to screw in yourself. But it’s 30 bucks. So if you take that analogy and apply it to cyber, I can’t get cheaper tables by outsourcing to Vietnam or buying cheaper products from somewhere else. I have to fundamentally re-engineer what a table means. It is something different.”
“And that’s what we’ve done. We’ve taken the core ideas of the technology, and we’ve stripped it all away, simplified it, bundled it and sold it as that package. Which means that it’s pre-integrated; it’s easily deployable. You don’t have to fiddle with it and it works. That’s the only way you can sell SMBs,” he explained.
Working with partners
StrongKeep started reaching out to customers directly at first as they needed to established the brand and what they were doing. However, Keerthi pointed out that over time, they’ve started to get some interest from partners who were amazed by the price and capabilities and how they could make the most out of it as well.
“They’re like, hey my customer just told me that they’re onboarding you. I’m the IT vendor, why don’t you work with me instead? And so that was a great dynamic for us to have because the customer was telling their IT vendor that they’re using StrongKeep and if the IT vendor could work with us. And so then eventually the IT vendors came to us,” he said.
This was a win-win situation for StrongKeep as Keerti stated that partners were offering MSP services with the solution and getting some margin from it. For StrongKeep, it also allowed them to access a customer base that’s already well served by somebody who’s taking care of them on a daily basis.
“So MSPs have been a great, and we’ve realized that the type of MSPs that serve smaller businesses are very different. A lot of like one-two-man shows, they have a locked-in base of like a certain set of customers, and they’ve been with them for like 10 years. Which is great because the access and trust is immediately transferable, which is so very dangerous for the company. All of your policies are in this guy’s head. They’re actually very supportive and they appreciate that we have made a difficult job easier for them and given them an opportunity to service their customers and things that they wouldn’t be able to do before,” he added.
With pricing for StrongKeep solutions starting at SG$39 a month for five devices, Keerthi shared that most SMBs soon realize that the cost is almost similar to what they pay for their AI usage on average.
“For most companies, they look at it and they’re like, that seems reasonable. It seems like something that they should be spending on and can spend on. And again, if you go back to it, everybody knows cyber security is a problem. They’ve not done anything about it because they think it’s too difficult to do. So, we address that by making it simple. We address it by making it affordable. So, you address these two. Actually, a lot of people no longer have an objection. They know their business needs it. They know it’s not affordable,” he concluded.
