'Spherical Defence Labs' all set to fight Cyber Crime

In today's life when the whole world is shifting to digital mediums for day to day routine works, cyber security is the need of the hour.

Working towards the mission to fight cyber crime, graduates from NIT Trichy and UCL London came together to form "Spherical Defence Labs", a new startup doing cyber security tests for PayTM and OYO Rooms.

Their inspiration was winning the second place all India at the Microsoft HackCon hacking event, and they went on to establish a global company with offices in London, Pune and California.

Cyber security is a matter of national security with the heavy reliance of critical national infrastructure on technology, and the sheer usage of mobile wallets and E-Commerce websites. Cyber security is on top of Prime Minister Modi's agenda for Digital India, where he dreams of it to become an integral part of national security.

He believes cyber security is giving sleepless nights to the heads of states of nations across the world. "Is it not possible for us to create a foolproof mechanism against cyber threats so that the world can sleep well?" Mr. Modi said. If a solution to this problem is not found, many will stop using technology altogether due to concerns of hacking and surveillance, etc, which could come as a huge shock to the industry.

Spherical Defence Labs works to expose hacks, vulnerabilities and loopholes in server infrastructure, websites and mobile applications.With clients including PayTM, OYO Rooms, Citrus Pay and NIT Trichy among others, they are hot in the cyber security industry.

Dishant, one of the Founders says that "Cyber security is one of the biggest concerns, and something which is becoming extremely relevant. Just some time back, a major UK telecom service provider, TalkTalk was hacked and this lead to a data breach, which may have potentially included credit card data. Surprisingly this was a trivial SQL Injection vulnerability, exploited by a fifteen year old teen. At present, skilled expertise in security is hard to find. This is precisely what leads to massive vulnerabilities and loopholes, which can be exploited easily."

The shortage of talent is the problem, and most of the companies take security seriously only after it's too late. Being solely focused on growth, Cyber security is often overlooked by startups.

According to the NASSCOM President R Chandrasekhar, India needs at least one million cyber security professionals by 2020, however the current estimate is at 50,000. This is the gap in the market and the problem Spherical Defence is fixing.

The founders of Spherical Defence Labs are four Cyber security experts from NIT Trichy and UCL. They have an extensive background in technology and hacking, and have won multiple events whilst at college including the Paypal Hackathon and the Microsoft HackCon.

They have contributed to and created popular open source projects, and have developed internal services and the website at college. They've also had multiple stints at the biggest names in tech including Microsoft, Amazon and Samsung.