A Sewickley-based cybersecurity business has been recognized for excellence as a start-up company.
Custos IQ was named a 2024 Tech 50 finalist in the start-up company culture category by the Pittsburgh Technology Council from Intersections of Possibility.
Co-owners Robert Ragan Jr. and Isabelle Syring work with a small team of cybersecurity industry experts to provide proactive, offensive strategies to protect data and maintain a business’s competitive edge.
“We’re very proud of that,” said Syring of the recognition. “We can’t disclose how many clients we have, and we have clients in the government space.”
Ragan, who has more than 30 years of experience in the IT field, founded the company in 2021.
“We are a managed offensive cybersecurity company, and we started the company to focus on small and medium-sized companies,” Ragan said. “We bring enterprise local tools to those businesses for which they may not be aware of or can’t get their hands on without spending lots and lots of money.”
Ragan and Syring chose an office location along Beaver Street in Sewickley because they like the area.
“We like downtown Sewickley, and our clients love coming here,” Syring said.
Syring hails from Frankfurt, Germany, and interned for Ragan in college. She has a degree in intelligence studies and cybersecurity and studied at Slippery Rock University and the University of Pittsburgh. She heads the managed security service provider division.
Custos offers continuous monitoring of company data and anticipates and monitors potential cyber threats.
The Custos team helps to reduce stress by handling the burden of protecting data from external threats, maintaining compliance and optimizing cybersecurity insurance costs.
They chose the company name by using the Latin word Custos, which translates to “guard.”
Clients include domestic and international businesses ranging in size from two people to billion-dollar companies.
“Our focus is to bring cybersecurity to the little guy,” Syring said. “We believe that a small or medium-sized business should have access to the same cybersecurity tools that the big enterprise corporations have — that is our mission.”
The leading business cybersecurity concern fielded by Custos IQ is sophisticated, malicious emails that are incredibly difficult to recognize as such. Email security is a huge point for businesses.
“Even we need to take a second look with some of the emails we see,” Syring noted.
Ragan pointed out three countries leading cybercriminal attacks globally — Russia, China and Brazil.
According to data provided by Custos IQ, 63% of organizations are, at best, moderately confident in their ability to block and detect ransomware attacks, and 91% of all attacks begin with a phishing email.
Clients include media figures and businesses representing the oil and gas industry.
Ragan emphasized that cybercriminals don’t discriminate.
“The same attackers are attacking all of us, and they’re motivated by finances and information,” Ragan said, adding that the goal with regard to energy-sector businesses is to shut them down.
Ragan has witnessed a lot of change in his long career.
“With the advent of the internet, there are a lot more concerns that can go on now,” he said.
Cellphones have changed the landscape, and there are many sources from which a person’s information can end up on the dark web.
When asked about the dark web and who controls it, the team pondered the mystery of that corner of the internet: “If we knew that, we’d be kings of the world,” Syring said.
To date, none of their clients has been hacked or compromised.
The team offered this piece of security advice: “Don’t use the same password over and over again,” Syring said.
“We feel like we’re doing a lot of good work and making great strides, especially in the energy sector,” Syring said. “We feel very proud. I can’t say (which), but there was a county here … that was recently hacked, and we’re proud to say that none of our customers there were affected.”
