CrowdStrike acquired Payload Security, the company behind the automated malware analysis sandbox technology Hybrid Analysis, in November 2017. Jan Miller founded Payload Security approximately 3 years earlier. The interview I conducted with Jan in early 2015 captured his mindset at the onset of the journey that led to this milestone. I briefly spoke with Jan again, a few days after the acquisition. He reflected upon his progress over the three years of leading Payload Security so far and his plans for Hybrid Analysis as part of CrowdStrike.
Jan, why did you and your team decide to join CrowdStrike?
Developing a malware analysis product requires a constant stream of improvements to the technology, not only to keep up with the pace of malware authors' attempts to evade automated analysis but also innovate and embrace the community. The team has accomplished a lot thus far, but joining CrowdStrike gives us the ability to access a lot more resources and grow the team to rapidly improve Hybrid Analysis in the competitive space that we live in. We will have the ability to bring more people into the team and also enhance and grow the infrastructure and integrations behind the free Hybrid Analysis community platform.
What role did the free version of your product, available at hybrid-analysis.com, play in the company's evolution?
A lot of people in the community have been using the free version of Hybrid Analysis to analyze their own malware samples, share them with friends or to look-up existing analysis reports and extract intelligence. Today, the site has approximately 44,000 active users and around 1 million sessions per month. One of the reasons the site took off is the simplicity and quality of the reports, focusing on what matters and enabling effective incident response.
The success of Hybrid Analysis was, to a large extent, due to the engagement from the community. The samples we have been receiving allowed us to constantly field-test the system against the latest malware, stay on top of the game and also to embrace feedback from security professionals. This allowed us to keep improving at rapid pace in a competitive space, successfully.
What will happen to the free version of Hybrid Analysis? I saw on Twitter that your team pinky-promised to continue making it available for free to the community, but I was hoping you could comment further on this.
I'm personally committed to ensuring that the community platform will stay not only free, but grow even more useful and offer new capabilities shortly. Hybrid Analysis deserves to be the place for professionals to get a reasoned opinion about any binary they've encountered. We plan to open up the API, add more integrations and other free capabilities in the near future.
What stands out in your mind as you reflect upon your Hybrid Analysis journey so far? What's motivating you to move forward?
Starting out without any noteworthy funding, co-founders or advisors, in a saturated high-tech market that is extremely fast paced and full of money, it seemed impossible to succeed on paper. But the reality is: if you are offering a product or service that is solving a real-world problem considerably better than the market leaders, you always have a chance. My hope is that people who are considering becoming entrepreneurs will be encouraged to pursue their ideas, but be prepared to work 80 hours a week, have the right technology, the feedback from the community, amazing team members and lean on insightful advisors and you can make it happen.
In fact, it's because of the value Hybrid Analysis has been adding to the community that I was able to attract the highly talented individuals that are currently on the team. It has always been important for me to make a difference, to contribute something and have a true impact on people's lives. It all boils down to bringing more light than darkness into the world, as cheesy as that might sound.