Charles Dray, the visionary founder and CEO of Resonance Security, has built a reputation for delivering comprehensive cybersecurity solutions that protect against even the most sophisticated attacks. In this exclusive TechBullion interview, we look into Dray’s innovative approach, his journey from startup to industry leader, and the future of cybersecurity.
Please tell us about yourself?
I was born and raised in New York City and always had a fascination with technology, psychology, and sales, and how those things intersect to help society evolve. From a very young age, I was involved in commercial endeavors, starting with selling for my dad’s promotional advertisement company to local businesses. After graduating Syracuse University in 2007, I worked at various banks in tech heavy areas like fx, efx, and transaction banking. When I discovered Satoshi’s paper in 2010, I really dove deeper into the tech realizing it could be a game changer. I was also fascinated with the cybersecurity implications of this new technology. This became my motivation for entering the web3 and cybersecurity space where I took on roles leading sales teams and was able to achieve some incredible achievements through building amazing relationships with organizations and cybersecurity engineers.
Tell us about your background in the cybersecurity space, your journey in the cybersecurity industry and what inspired you to found Resonance Security?
Throughout my life I was always poking at systems and trying to understand how technology was built, and what pressures it can withstand. I was involved in various cybersecurity initiatives in my previous roles, and I was the lead sales person in some cybersecurity heavy roles. I noticed something was missing in the cybersecurity space – both at large companies and at startups. Organizations were ignoring or overlooking cybersecurity threats because of time constraints, cost, and other priorities. This often resulted in hacks. I wanted to create a high-quality, affordable cybersecurity provider that can cover all the highest priority engagements while making it effortless and cost effective for organizations to cover all the remaining gaps. This realization led me to found Resonance Security in March of 2023.
Can you explain what a full-spectrum approach to cybersecurity means for Resonance Security and how it differentiates your company from others in the market?
Full spectrum cybersecurity means that we look at every angle of cybersecurity from code to the individuals working at the organizations, and take it to a much more granular investigation than typically available. For example, in typical high priority engagements, we customize engagement scopes for a wide range of situations from emerging technology and blockchain code like solidity, rust, cadence and move, or we can cover traditional cybersecurity such as penetration testing and cloud assessments for compliance or just scheduled audits. In any of these engagements we combine hacker simulations, manual testing, in house tooling, and various, continuously growing applications granted to the customer at no extra charge to effortlessly test for important vulnerabilities across the stack, especially high impact areas, whenever they would like, and continuously obtain cybersecurity testing results way beyond a pdf report. Resonance also enables organizations to securely store any engagement actions handled by Resonance or any third party providers as well, making it a remarkably easy means for any organization to keep track of changes to their cybersecurity approach over time, and improve it as threats evolve.
Why is cybersecurity more critical than ever in today’s global market, and how do you see its importance evolving in the future?
Computer hackers have pretty much existed since computers have existed, but these days hackers are becoming more and more aggressive and impactful due to our society’s heavy reliance on computers and the internet. Both individual hackers and hacker groups continuously develop and evolve, but the biggest hacker groups like Lazarus, and nations looking to benefit from hacks have combined forces to attack as many angles as possible, and leverage new technologies. This puts everyone at risk. Not only are large companies vulnerable, but individuals, and even children and young adults are at risk of being hacked. This is because there is so much value for hackers in gathering as much data as possible and keeping it in their back pocket for an opportune moment.
What are some of the most prevalent cyber threats today, and how have you seen these threats evolve over time?
It depends if you are talking about threats to the web3 or web2 space, but in general the most prevalent threats still start out with phishing, data leaks, and critical vulnerability in assets exposed to the internet. Web3 security threats relate to code in the smart contracts. Web2 components are critical to assess like cloud environments (usually web3 use AWS), mobile apps, web apps, browser extensions, operational security, and social engineering attacks, and more. It’s alarming, but often web3 projects just get a smart contract audit, and forget about the web 2 parts. It’s important to keep in mind that the web2 parts are the foundation for any organization, because emerging tech layers still rely heavily on the traditional cybersecurity layers.
How does Resonance Security ensure it stays ahead of emerging threats through continuous research and development?
Our team is constantly in research mode. In addition to engaging with clients on cybersecurity engagements, we look to spot trends in the cybersecurity space including areas that big time hacking organizations target. We keep a continuous record of research and trends and look for patterns and frequency of attacks. In addition to building applications that make it effortless for organizations to cover more common threats, we tackle building new tools that cover trends that emerge with evolving technologies and new attacks that come with those technologies, for example, preparing organizations from phishing attacks using AI. We all stay in tune with developments in the cybersecurity space, and while we release new apps, we’re always thinking about the next app we could build to cover emerging threats before those threats have a large impact.
What are some common challenges businesses face when trying to implement effective cybersecurity measures, and how does Resonance Security help address these challenges?
The primary issue for many individuals, and organizations in both Web2 and Web3 that we service is that they lack the guidance to determine what they need to secure and how to secure it. Due to the enormous number of threats they face and the overwhelming array of cybersecurity products and services on the market it’s very difficult for them to figure out what they need, and how to implement it most effectively. They also lack the time to figure out the most effective course of action often because their focus is on marketing and growth. We’re making it possible for everyone to continue focusing on growth while protecting against every kind of cyberthreat with the least amount of effort possible and to minimize projects spending time hiring, learning how to use a new tool, installing software, or developing less effective solutions in house.
Can you discuss the role of advanced technology in cybersecurity and how Resonance Security leverages these tools and techniques to protect clients?
AI provides many new opportunities for hackers, including more sophisticated social engineering tactics that exploit human elements rather than just technological vulnerabilities.
Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are becoming an increasingly important part of our jobs as cybersecurity experts, not only as a potential threat but also as a potential advantage as well. Many major cybersecurity companies are using AI natively in their security systems, such as Darktrace and others with deviations from normal operational profiles.
When AI is used in cybersecurity response, once a threat is detected, AI can automate the initial steps of the response protocol, such as isolating affected systems or cutting off certain network connections, to contain the threat. This rapid response capability is crucial, especially for large-scale intrusions, allowing human responders to focus on more strategic response activities rather than routine tasks.
While AI is a very helpful tool in cybersecurity response it cannot replace the security process and individual operators, preferably experienced cybersecurity engineers, are needed to examine the results and minimize false positives.
It’s incredibly important to track current trends in emerging technology because of the fact that technology is evolving quickly. Staying up to date on what the technology is capable of is integral to being able to respond to threats effectively and also leverage for new tools whenever possible.
What are the financial and reputational impacts of data breaches on businesses, and how can they mitigate these risks?
The financial and reputational impacts of attacks including data breaches can be huge, and the risk is not limited to large players in the crypto space or Fortune 500 companies.. Aside from loss of funds, oftentimes the loss of trust from the public can be just as damaging to organizations.
Data breaches don’t have to mean the destruction of an organization. Quickly determining the origin of the attack, remediating the issue, and implementing stronger security across the company’s stack serves as the most effective way to demonstrate improvement to your community and rebuild trust.
Of course proactive prevention is always the best approach. Some ways to mitigate these risks include proper password management with a strong software based password manager, implementing mandatory use of physical keys as the MFA source and enforcing MFA across all internal IS assets and business applications. There are many other prevention strategies that can be implemented, and these should be developed with your specific organization and its needs in mind. This can include creating and integrating an ISSP into a robust access review process with onboarding and offboarding procedures, AWS access key rotation, restricting guest access, implementing least privilege access principles, mandating a company-wide reset of all user and administrative passwords on every system, identifying, rotating, and monitoring all API keys and shared secrets, continuous monitoring, employee training, and many more.
Could you share some success stories or examples of how Resonance Security has helped clients from different industries achieve robust cybersecurity?
Often, the best success story regarding cybersecurity is when there is no story at all. This is because active prevention of cybersecurity is the most important tool in a company’s cybersecurity arsenal. Of course, even with preventative measures, hacks can still happen. We’ve worked with numerous projects where we provided them with Incident Response after they were hacked.. For example, we’ve helped projects with various breaches from data leaks, to DNS takeovers, and through our forensics work, the projects were able to gain clarity on how the hack happened, how to avoid further impact, and minimize the risk from hackers who would be looking for more backdoors through other areas in their stack. Hackers are opportunistic, so when they see a project scrambling to fix one issue, they will try to get the most out of that area, and look at other areas that might also have weaknesses. An indication of weakness can create vulnerability across the stack, and hackers know that. Our job is to help projects stop the bleeding, gain lessons from their negative experiences, and make them aware of other areas they are not paying attention to that can be devastating if hacked. Reputational recovery is key, and the only way to do that is to build trust by demonstrating that technical issues have been fixed, and that the organization has taken it beyond just that instinct to create a safer environment for all users in the future.
Why is a proactive approach to cybersecurity more effective than a reactive one, and how does Resonance Security help clients adopt this mindset?
As in medicine, prevention is better than a cure when it comes to cybersecurity. This is because once an organization has experienced a hack, it is very difficult to recover from the broken trust and reputational damage. It requires far less time, money, effort, to proactively prevent issues than it does to resolve problems that arise from a hack. When our clients see projects going up in smoke due to a single hack, the ROI on preventative cybersecurity becomes clear to them, and they understand why that investment is worthwhile. If organizations can build in cybersecurity right from the start, of course that’s always best, but even when projects come to us at later stages, they can focus on end-to-end cybersecurity and ensure they are building a secure foundation.
Of course, nothing is ever hack-proof so we have a full suite of defensive tools and services to offer to clients, but minimizing possibilities preventatively is always the best course of action.
For more information, visit the website: Resonance.security
