A new strategic partnership between Top 250 MSSP Booz Allen Hamilton and Elevate Security will address the “human element” of cybersecurity risk.
The partnership combines Booz Allen’s cybersecurity consulting services with Elevate’s human cyber risk quantification and mitigation software, according to a prepared statement.
Booz Allen’s Commercial team will use Elevate’s cyber risk intelligence capabilities to deliver rapid risk assessments and provide deep visibility to an organization's internal cyber risks, the companies said.
Additionally, Elevate will power the Booz Allen Commercial team’s Dynamic Cyber Trust solution. The solution adapts zero trust principles to individual risk scores, delivering cyber protection that minimizes insider risk while ensuring organizational productivity.
The companies cite Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report stating:
“82% of breaches involved the human element. Whether it is the use of stolen credentials, phishing, misuse or simply an error, people continue to play a very large role in incidents and breaches alike.”
Creating a Living Human Risk Score
Elevate explains that it addresses workforce risk by integrating billions of independent data points across the organization and beyond to create an individual risk score, much like a credit score, for each worker. Risk factors, such as worker susceptibility to phishing, sensitive data handling, safe browsing and password management, are combined with demographics and other characteristics to form a constantly updated Human Risk Score.
Andrew Turner, executive vice president, chief technology officer and market strategy lead for Booz Allen’s global Commercial business, described the advantages to the Elevate partnership:
“Our Dynamic Cyber Trust solution leverages the Elevate Security platform to create a uniquely scalable approach that holistically targets one of cybersecurity’s root causes of failure — people. Our solution builds on core concepts of the emergent cybersecurity framework, zero trust, adding human risk assessments and employee cyber behavior analysis. This strategic and predictive approach to organizational cybersecurity eliminates implicit trust, continuously validates every stage of digital interaction, and provides transparent and measurable human-centric feedback to reduce security gaps over time.”
Echoing those sentiments, Elevate Security CEO and co-founder Robert Fly added:
“We are proud to partner with Booz Allen to deliver innovative and ready-to-deploy human risk management capabilities to their commercial clients. These new offerings will empower organizations to combat advanced cybersecurity attacks aimed at employees and contractors throughout the supply chain with solutions proven to deploy at speed and scale in Fortune 50 enterprise accounts.”
Booz Allen Continues to Build Cybersecurity Business
Booz Allen is prioritizing cybersecurity as it executes a four-part plan to grow its Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) by approximately 50% through fiscal 2025, CEO Horacio Rozanski and CFO Lloyd Howell said during their company’s earnings call on July 29, 2022. It also has between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion to spend on “strategic acquisitions” through 2025, Rozanski told Wall Street analysts during his company’s earnings call on January 28, 2022.
Booz Allen’s partnership with Elevate tails on other recent collaborations with:
- Graphics processing unit (GPU) inventor NVIDIA to expand a prior agreement to offer an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled, GPU-accelerated cybersecurity platform to customers in the public and private sectors
- IT risk and compliance software company CyberSaint to provide organizations with cyber risk quantification and analytics capabilities
- Acalvio Technologies to provide cyber deception technologies to commercial and government organizations
