Domestic vendors with next-generation skill sets are competing on the global stage
The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan, collaborated with Frost & Sullivan to develop a set of comprehensive case studies to showcase the region’s brightest security innovators.
“The cybersecurity industry has a history of developing homegrown solutions in Taiwan. Government initiatives have driven awareness and the development of cybersecurity solutions in recent years. The complex and sophisticated cyber attacks nowadays are fostering specialized, homegrown cybersecurity solutions in Taiwan,” said Amy Lin, Industry Analyst, Cybersecurity, Frost & Sullivan.
Taiwan already has fairly wide awareness and reach in the global IT hardware industry, contributing a sizable portion of the global cybersecurity hardware appliance market. Its expertise in the world of integrated device security and competitive advantage in hardware-software integration have given it a unique advantage in the security market amid the global proliferation of connected devices. This background enables vendors in Taiwan to gain proven skills in complex integrations and enhance their product suites by pairing with other best-of-breed hardware and software technologies.
The Taiwan government has established a plan to invest around 400 million USD on cybersecurity from 2017 to 2020, to enhance the cybersecurity capabilities of the government. This investment expansion in local talent and technologies has allowed for a fast-paced, collaborative, and creative mix of both start-ups and incumbents. These vendors have moved out of security comfort zones, driving disruptions in greener pastures ranging from IoT and mobile device solutions to blockchain and artificial intelligence-powered technologies.
Security solutions from key players like Onward Security, Lydsec, ARCRAN, CyCraft, WiSecure Technologies, Billows Technology, BlockChain Security, Ecolux, KeyXentic, and CHT Security have found wide adoption among the government, financial, and manufacturing sectors in Taiwan. While steadily increasing their market shares within home base Taiwan, these vendors have also been extending their flagship products’ footprints to global markets in other parts of Southeast Asia and North America.
Success Showcase
The following customer stories showcase Taiwanese vendors’ proven track record of building innovative and customized security solutions for their key customers:
- ARCRAN‘s cybersecurity expertise focuses on providing IoT and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) security solutions through wireless signal detection. One of ArcRan’s clients used the iSecMaster solution in its smart factory to reduce the signal-recognition misjudgment rate in their smart factories from a staggering 20% to less than 0.5%.
- Billows Technology provides security solutions and services spanning two primary areas, audit management and security information and event management (SIEM). One of its clients, a premier local railway network, used Billows’ solution to enhance its threat detection and reduce incident response time to ensure safer passenger journeys.
- BlockChain Security has been providing blockchain, evidence preservation, and security forensic solutions for over 10 years. One of its law firm clients struggled with large volumes of complex document management and the resultant security needs; the BlockChain Witness platform successfully reduced its operational time from over 20 hours to about 10 minutes.
- CHT Security is a leading managed security service provider (MSSP) in Taiwan but also provides broad solutions and products covering major aspects of enterprise security, such as network and endpoint security, professional services, and digital identity services. CHT Security used a homegrown red team assessment approach on its financial services client. The approach helped discover over 30 system flaws within only a week.
- CyCraft focuses on AI-driven cyber resilience. Its CyCarrier’s AIR platform automates SOC operations, forensics, detection, and response operations. When one of its clients was about to begin a critical acquisition, the platform was able to shorten the cybersecurity investigation from several months to just a few days, reducing investigation time, cost, and labor by over 99%.
- ECOLUX‘s primary focus is on chipset firmware protection. Leveraging the AI-powered smart device security solution, the ECOLUX’s AISP Home Guardian directly targets intrusion detection on smart devices, finding and blocking attacks immediately. The solution helped a major smart home specialist provide end-to-end device security on its smart lock products.
- KeyXentic‘s products, the Keyxentic Token and Smart Terminal, apply biometric identification technology to replace traditional password-based services that make encryption easy and accessible. When its banking client was struggling to find an iOS-compatible vendor, KeyXentic came to the rescue with its Smart Terminal, securing the bank’s extensive network of self-service iPads.
- Lydsec‘s key solution, Keypasco, focuses on multifactor identity authentication that includes functionalities such as geolocation, device fingerprinting, two-channel structure identification, and PKI signing. A key financial service client using the vendor’s Keypasco solution saved up to 70% in authentication costs.
- Onward Security has a one-stop integrated suite of services and products for IoT, mobile devices, and network vulnerabilities. When one of its clients was struggling with maintaining security standards to mitigate key clients churn, Onward helped ramp up its product security standards and retained accounts worth $400 million.
- WiSecure Technologies‘ product is the KeyVault Hardware Security Module. When its public sector client needed a secure communication layer, WiSECURE’s μSD/X was able to integrate into Signal’s cross-platform application, bulking up the client’s SCA prevention strategy through cryptographic algorithms.
Local vendors in Taiwan have curated a background of targeting highly specific business cases focused on discovering less known, complex attacks that other vendors are still not addressing. Given Taiwan’s unique strengths, integrated hardware and software expertise, and innovation potential in Asia-Pacific, its local vendors are making significant inroads into the global security marketplace — a space ripe for disruption.
