Cybersecurity's role in compliance and business resilience

For many tech founders, compliance standards like ISO 27001, SOC 1, SOC 2, and PCI DSS are often the driving force behind their initial investment in cybersecurity. Without the pressure of these regulatory requirements, some products might neglect security controls until a costly breach forces their hand.

With standards like these becoming essential for businesses seeking growth and partnerships, tech companies face the challenge of achieving compliance. This is especially difficult for smaller companies with tight budgets, limited resources, and lack of security expertise.

Our journey with Deepengine began as we encountered this same issue. We'll share how we were able to beat the limitations of traditional vulnerability solutions to build an accessible, enterprise-quality platform for businesses of all sizes.

Towards the end, we'll also provide a quick overview of our platform's capabilities.

ISO 27001 – a gateway to adopting cybersecurity?

The ISO 27001 framework is crucial for partnering with enterprise clients. It’s likely the very first certificate companies are looking to tackle.

In 2022, the ISO 27001:2022 Annex A objective 8.8 highlighted the need for proactive vulnerability detection, monitoring, and remediation of our external systems.

Hard truth: startups tend to skip security in their early stages

While we believe security controls should be integrated into every product from Day 0, most SMBs think differently. They typically consider security only after receiving funding, facing compliance pressures, or – in the worst case – after experiencing a breach.

Young products are overwhelmed, juggling growth, marketing, and MVP validation. Security appears as an intimidating complexity with prohibitive costs and resource demands that SMBs feel they cannot afford.

Existing solutions primarily target larger organizations with bigger budgets, reinforcing the perception that robust security only for the big players.

Common ways for how tech teams solve security today:

• Penetration testing: Comprehensive security assessments remain financially out of reach for most SMBs, with typical white hat hacking engagements costing between $20,000 to $40,000.

• Security platforms: Popular solutions like Intruder and ConnectSecure provide great value, but lack free tiers that would allow companies to evaluate the long-term value of continuous security monitoring. Most SMBs are left guessing about potential returns on these tools.

• Bounty programs and DIY audits: Internal teams often resort to manual checks, one one-off bounty programs. This gives a false sense of security, resulting in inconsistent and superficial assessments.

As cybercrime becomes increasingly sophisticated, bad actors specifically target smaller businesses – viewing them as easier prey. The potential consequences are severe: data breaches, financial losses, and irreparable reputation damage.

The root problem extends beyond mere "negligence". Young companies approach security reactively, moving into panic mode only when external pressures demand action. Whether facing am upcoming compliance audit, a detected breach, or investor questions about security protocols, businesses are driven by fear rather than strategic mindset.

This stress-induced approach leaves them perpetually vulnerable, constantly scrambling to patch holes instead of building resilient security foundations.

How it all began with Deepengine

As a Swiss-based cloud hosting company, we hit a critical challenge as our product was growing: building a secure infrastructure that could protect our clients' data and navigate complex compliance requirements. Existing solutions were inadequate, presenting us with a hard choice: drain our budget or forge our own path.

Armed with time, curiosity, and a touch of entrepreneurial spirit, we took the innovation path. And what started as an internal scanner to find vulnerabilities in our public-facing infrastructure quickly evolved into a comprehensive vulnerability management tool. We kept on grinding, developing features to scan threats, manage targets and scanning schedules, escalate findings in Slack, and generate detailed compliance report, and more.

We quickly realized its potential and saw that our platform could also be transformative for tech teams across most targeted industries – from e-commerce and data to medtech and fintech.

Deepengine emerged as an affordable security solution that anyone can use, breaking down the cost and complexity barriers that keep consistent cybersecurity out of reach for many.

In our journey, we found, and still are driven by a the same mission:

Discover Deepengine benefits

1. Secure your business for free.

   Anyone can start with Deepengine for free. The free tier comes with 1 target and one monthly scan. With a paid plan – you get more flexibility, and pay for a monthly fee plus a target commission that decreases as you opt in for more. Large organizations can scan up to 500 targets with on-demand scans.

2. Regular, black-box scanning

   We focus on scanning and testing your publicly accessible infrastructure by simulating adversaries with a.k.a “black box“ approach. Our platform scans for over 150,000 unique vulnerabilities across your attack surface on regular basis.

3. Easy to adopt and use

   Our platform is designed for security teams, IT administrators, and non-technical users. Users can easily configure targets, set scanning schedules, get findings, and act on recommendations from the day.

Core features

• Target management: Centralized asset management and status tracking of your external assets.

• Consistent threat scanning: Continuously scan for vulnerabilities daily, weekly, or monthly.

• Compliance-ready reporting: Instantly generate executive .pdf reports to support your audit and due diligence efforts.

• Flexible schedules: Segregate your scans based on environment and sync with your development routines and plans.

• Integrations: Manage threat response faster with Slack or Webhook for custom workflows.

Our future plans

We’re not stopping at external target scanning; upcoming updates will also support:

• Authenticated scans to check the patch level and find vulnerabilities in internal Linux, Unix, and Windows systems.

• App portfolio & API vulnerability scanning to uncover issues in critical business logic and customer-facing apps.

• Honeypot solution designed to lure and spot malicious actors attempting to breach your systems.

• Network flow analytics to analyze traffic and flag suspicious activity.

• Built-in AI companion to help users navigate through issues and speed response cycle.

Secure your business today starting for free

Sign up to safeguard your tomorrow or book a quick call to see if Deepengine is right for you (it totally is).