Torq is a company that developed Hyperautomation, which unifies and automates the entire security infrastructure to deliver unparalleled protection and productivity. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Torq CTO and co-founder Leonid Belkind to learn more about the company.
Leonid Belkind’s Background
What is Belkind’s background? Belkind said:
“As co-founder and CTO of Torq, the security industry’s first hyperautomation platform, I’m disrupting the industry by automating enterprise security teams’ workflows amidst an industry-wide talent shortage, along with the resulting burnout among existing staff. Torq Hyperautomation differentiates itself from its competitors by seamlessly integrating with existing cybersecurity tools to automate workflows at rapid speeds.”
“I have more than 20 years of experience in this space, which has helped the platform achieve 800% revenue and 10x customer growth within its first two years. Prior to founding Torq, I co-founded Luminate Security, paving the way for innovation in ZTNA and SASE prior to its acquisition by Symantec.”
“Since Torq’s launch, our hyper-automation platform has secured Fortune 500 enterprises, including the world’s biggest financial and technology companies – coining Torq, your security product’s favorite security product. Why? Because our platform unifies the entire security infrastructure to deliver enhanced protection and productivity by hyper-automating every app and stack across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments.”
Formation Of Torq
How did the idea for Torq come together and what are the company’s core products and features? Belkind shared:
“Many companies in this space were founded based on a solution-first approach, in which they have a technological idea, then create awareness for a problem to market that product to the industry.”
“After 20 years of experience in enterprise security, I noticed a problem first – a talent shortage caused by cybersecurity burnout. Cyber teams are faced with an overwhelming amount of threats, without enough time to proactively safeguard data. In response to this, our team developed the Torq Hyperautomation Platform which features the world’s first GPT AI-based analytics capability to analyze incidents and deliver strategic responses. Torq Hyperautomation Platform the power of AI to handle manual, time-consuming tasks, freeing up security professionals’ time to focus on tasks that require human expertise. Torq’s GPT-integrated chatbot answers user requests in real-time, increasing the speed, quality, and accuracy of investigating and resolving security issues.”
“We’ve kept the vision of problem-solving top of mind and continue to granularly track critical trends within IT and streamline those processes through powerful hyperautomation.”
“Most recently, our team launched the industry’s first Tier-1 analysis AI agent, Torq Socrates, which closes 90% of Tier-1 and Tier-2 SOC tickets autonomously. Research shows that more than 4 in 5 companies admit that they have less than five security analysts or don’t have enough analysts to run the SOC. We developed this AI agent to hyper-automate key security operations activities in order to alleviate this pain point in the industry. Torq Socrates is equipped to investigate incidents and provide response accuracy. No longer does the burden sit on cybersecurity professionals’ shoulders as Torq Socrates becomes a fundamental ‘member’ of their team.”
Evolution Of Torq’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Belkind noted:
“Alongside its cutting-edge technology, Torq has developed its Partner Acceleration Program, guaranteeing the highest margin opportunities possible, up to 25%, and provides full transparency across the platform’s ecosystem. Torq’s partner program has continued to evolve including a customer outcome-based tiering system, keeping margin opportunities at the forefront of their partner programs. Torq addresses the critical need for security teams and security companies to get the maximum benefit from the hyper-automation platform by highlighting a collaborative customer experience.”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Belkind about the company’s funding and revenue metrics, he revealed:
“In its third year of operation, Torq has achieved 300% revenue growth and 500% customer growth resulting in $120 million in total funding. Torq is transforming the security automation industry by continuing to grow its customer base, steadily becoming a must-have platform for enterprise security teams.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Belkind and the team faced in building the company? Belkind acknowledged:
“We faced many challenges on the road to success. We first established our team in 2019 when we decided to not only create a new company but a new security category entirely with hyper-automation – all amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“As we established ourselves and our company, we overcame the challenge of fostering an interpersonal and connected workplace culture amid in-person restrictions. We’ve emphasized the importance of radical openness, and having fun, even as we address some of the world’s most critical cybersecurity problems – a trait that’s been clear in our messaging and mercurial branding within the industry.”
“We continue working to show the industry how hyper-automation can help solve problems like limited talent, resources, and budget. Nevertheless, we were able to gather a tight-knit, all-star team of security professionals from a wide range of organizations. Now, Gartner recognizes hyper-automation as ‘a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.’”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Belkind cited:
“In 2023, we introduced the world’s first enterprise-grade security hyper-automation platform, which automates all workflows and processes across the entirety of enterprise security organizations to deliver end-to-end cybersecurity protection. We also launched Torq Socrates, cybersecurity’s first Tier-1 analysis AI agent. Socrates uses AI to transform SecOps by hyper-automation of key security activities, including alert triage, contextual data enrichment, and incident response.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Belkind about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We support a number of world-class and Fortune 500 enterprises, including companies from many industries, such as financial, tech, consumer packaged goods, fashion, hospitality and sports apparel. Some of these customers include Armis, Carvana, Check Point, Chipotle, Hashicorp, Rivian, SentinelOne, and ZoomInfo.”
“Rivian, a global leader in electric and autonomous vehicle innovation and manufacturing, relies on Torq Hyperautomation and its AI capabilities to autonomously connect and automate critical cybersecurity processes across the business as a core pillar of its SecOps practices.”
“Tim Vulanich, Senior Staff Cybersecurity Engineer at Rivian, said: ‘This partnership marks the beginning of an entirely new approach to data protection and insider risk management and reflects our commitment to safeguard our IP and our end customer data.” With the use of Torq, Rivian is mitigating industry trends of professional burnout, staffing shortages, and budget restraints.’”
“In fact, Rivian is seeing extraordinary results with Torq as it’s able to save over 17,000 hours and run 1.6 million security workflow executions in just 90 days.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Belkind affirmed:
“One of our marketing taglines is, ‘Torq is your security product’s favorite security product.’ What makes us different from our competition is that we offer a cost-effective and time-saving tool to hyper-automate a company’s security system, ditching legacy security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) and instead introducing solutions that integrate with anything and automate everything.”
“SOAR falls short as it was built to be reactive rather than proactive, with antiquated tools not equipped to handle modern threats and its evolving landscape. 80% of organizations agree that SOAR is too complex, costly, and time-consuming. Instead of helping, the tool can actually hold companies back as it reduces and limits progress and speed.”
“Competitors like Splunk and Palo Alto Networks lead with SOAR tools, which have many onboarding challenges like necessary, expensive services and limited templates and extensibility. To address these problems, Torq hyper-automates any security process and extends beyond the SOC. We aim to deliver a modern customer-first onboarding approach that focuses on partnership, provides consultative approaches as needed, and has hundreds of templates to help companies get started. Our hyper-automation solution combines AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation that proactively and rapidly identifies and integrates business and IT processes.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Belkind pointed out:
“Torq is aiming to expand our partner program, letting our partners and future partners know that our program is designed to drive ROI for their customers while providing confidence about their security platform. The company also continues to push itself as a leader in decoding security for enterprise IT teams.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Belkind reflected:
“We established the company right before the first wave of COVID-19 hit. During the two years that followed, we were building out our business without the possibility of traveling and meeting many of our colleagues face-to-face.”
“My favorite memory is related to the first in-person company meeting after some of the restrictions were lifted and being able to meet my colleagues face-to-face for the first time after ‘knowing’ them and working with them for months.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Belkind concluded:
“At the moment, we are focusing on the Security Operations market (that consists of products and managed services) as our main TAM. The compound addressable market size there is in the billions and it is growing every year with a high CAGR.”
