Gurucul is a security analytics company founded in data science that delivers radical clarity about cyber risk. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Gurucul CEO Saryu Nayyar to learn more about the company.
Saryu Nayyar’s Background
What is Saryu Nayyar’s background? Nayyar said:
“I’m inspired by people who push boundaries and rethink what’s possible. My first role model and mentor was my mother, who rose to the position as a judge in India after pursuing a PhD in law in the United States. She was a trailblazer and instilled in me a fierce desire to continuously learn and grow.”
“After earning a Management Information Systems degree from UC, I joined Ernst & Young’s information security and risk practice. This experience was instrumental in developing my problem-solving skills and understanding of strategic challenges faced by CEOs and CISOs in FORTUNE 100 companies. It led me to co-found the software company Vaau. Our solution automated role-based, or identity, access management.”
Formation Of Gurucul
How did the idea for Gurucul come together? Nayyar shared:
“After successfully selling Vaau to Sun Microsystems, I spent several years at Oracle before rekindling my entrepreneurial passion. Recognizing the convergence of identity access management and the emerging fields of big data and machine learning, I co-founded Gurucul.”
“We pioneered User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to address a critical challenge: differentiating between normal and suspicious user activity within an organization. With UEBA as an essential foundation, we envisioned a holistic security solution. This led to the development of REVEAL, our unified security analytics platform. By harnessing the power of big data, AI, and machine learning, REVEAL effectively detects both external and internal threats while enabling rapid and precise countermeasures.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Nayyar reflected:
“There are so many great memories, I’m not certain I can pick one. From our early days bootstrapping the company, which remains completely self-funded today, to earning our first customer win, there have been hundreds of great moments. The highlights for me are when we are able to uniquely solve a customer problem. That’s what excites me every day.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Nayyar explained:
“Our core product is REVEAL, a cloud-native security analytics platform. It analyzes enterprise data at scale using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Instead of useless alerts, it provides real-time, actionable information about true threats and their associated risk.”
“The platform is open, flexible, cloud native and cost optimized. It’s the only platform to offer a native data optimization solution, which filters and forks data so that you analyze only the data needed for threat detections and can send non-critical data to less expensive repositories. Along with Data Optimizer, our platform provides key capabilities like Next-Gen SIEM, UEBA, Open XDR, and SOAR. These are all available within a single console so customers can start with their most critical need and easily expand their capabilities with a license change. There is no need to redeploy the product or replicate data.”
Evolution Of Gurucul’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Nayyar noted:
“Our world is in constant flux, driven by rapid innovation. As a result, Gurucul’s technology is continually evolving to address the dynamic challenges faced by our customers. The past decade has witnessed a seismic shift from on-premise to cloud-centric environments, accompanied by a surge in sophisticated threats like ransomware. Concurrently, the exponential growth of data has fueled groundbreaking advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence.”
“Our technology is engineered to meet the challenges of today’s complex and dynamic threat landscape. We’ve built an exceptionally adaptable platform capable of integrating seamlessly into any IT infrastructure. Our ability to ingest and process vast amounts of data from diverse sources, combined with over a decade of refining our machine learning models, empowers us to pinpoint threats with unmatched accuracy. At the core of our solution is AI, which continuously enhances threat detection, automates model creation, and recommends optimal incident response strategies. Additionally, AI-driven natural language search and query capabilities accelerate investigations and streamline the analyst workflow.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Nayyar cited:
“From our founding in 2010, we’ve achieved many milestones. We’ve grown from a handful of founders to a global company headquartered in Los Angeles with hundreds of employees. From an innovation standpoint, our advancements have led to 3 patents with 3 additional pending. We’ve achieved wide recognition for pioneering UEBA technology. As our platform has evolved, we’ve also been positioned as the Most Visionary SIEM by Gartner in their last two Magic Quadrants.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Nayyar about customer success stories, she highlighted a company case study.
Funding
When asking Nayyar about the company’s funding and revenue details, she revealed:
Gurucul is entirely privately funded. Unlike traditional cybersecurity startups, our path has differed. Instead of chasing big investment rounds and creating hype, we’ve stayed focused on innovation. Today, we’re the only founder-led, pure-play security analytics provider left standing. All of our closet competitors have merged, been acquired or have been bought by private equity or VC companies.
At RSA this year, the former CEO of one of our competitors asked me, ‘Saryu, how do you do it? You’re the only one left standing.’ I believe it’s because we’ve stayed focused on our mission – to unlock the human potential in every security operations team – and our vision – to empower security teams with innovative technology and expert guidance so they can perform at their full potential and secure the promise of a digital world. None of the rest matters if you can’t solve real customer problems.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Nayyar assessed:
“The SIEM market TAM is estimated to be as much as 8 billion dollars. Every mid-to-large sized enterprise has a SIEM. Many smaller enterprises leverage Managed Security Services Providers for SIEM-as-a-Service. Whether in-house or outsourced, the SIEM is integral to security operations. It is meant to be the single source of truth about what is going on across the IT and security ecosystems. Every organization needs the ability to detect, investigate and respond to actual threats effectively.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Nayyar affirmed:
“Unlike traditional security analytics platforms that impose exorbitant data ingestion costs, Gurucul offers a cost-effective solution. We believe customers shouldn’t pay for unnecessary data. Our platform stands out for five key reasons:
- Unparalleled Flexibility: Our open and adaptable platform empowers customers to deploy, integrate, and scale without limitations, aligning perfectly with their unique business and security requirements.
- Intelligent Data Optimization: Our innovative data fabric intelligently ingests, processes, and reduces data from any source, format, or IT estate. By extracting only essential information, we slash data costs by up to 50%.
- Dynamic Risk Assessment: Our risk engine holistically evaluates security and non-security data to quantify and prioritize risk, providing unmatched visibility into potential threats.
- Advanced Threat Detection: Our ML-driven analytics automatically analyze vast datasets, including endpoint, network, cloud, IoT, identity, and unstructured data, to uncover hidden risks and automate threat detection.
- Seamless Migration: Our complimentary migration program simplifies the transition from legacy solutions, accelerating value realization and reducing costs.
Gurucul is the only vendor delivering a cost-optimized security analytics platform that combines affordability with exceptional capabilities.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Nayyar concluded:
“The SIEM market is undergoing a significant transformation, presenting a unique opportunity for organizations to break free from the limitations of their current solutions. Many security leaders are dissatisfied with their existing platforms but feel locked into their investments. This is a critical juncture to reimagine your security strategy. It’s time to question the status quo. Instead of forcing your organization to adapt to a rigid solution, demand a platform that aligns perfectly with your needs. The future of security is here – embrace it.”
