Exclusive: Wave Systems CEO Discusses The Latest Trends In Cybersecurity

Benzinga recently had the chance to speak with Wave Systems Corp WAVX CEO Bill Solms about Wave’s unique cybersecurity products and what he’s seen as the most recent trends in the digital security world. Mr. Solms believes that Wave’s hardware-centric approach to digital security provides a much safer alternative to many of the company’s larger competitors.
 

What sets Wave apart
Wave describes data protection via the addition of software as a “failed, 20th-century approach” to security. Wave’s alternative to software bombardment is to build security directly into the device itself.
 

“We’re going into customer after customer, POC after POC and technically winning against the likes of RSA and Vasco,” Solms told Benzinga.

“Our solution uses the TPM chip, or the Trusted Platform Module, which gives us a huge head-start on other solutions when it comes to total cost of ownership,” he added.
 

Trends
When Benzinga asked Solms about the latest trends in cyber-attacks, he focused on compromised user credentials as a major point of weakness in modern cybersecurity.
 

“Even though hackers are doing some different things, there’s still a massive trend of using compromised user credentials as a means of gaining access to their intended targets,” Solms told Benzinga.
 

“There are various ways they could do that: they could spear phish somebody, they could buy it off the dark web, or they could compromise an outside system that has a cache of user credentials. Once they can mimic a valid user, they can bypass all the cyber-defenses that an organization has erected,” he explained.
 

According to Solms, Wave’s solution makes it “ridiculously difficult” for unauthorized users to gain access to a company’s IT environment to begin with.
 

Lagging share price
Despite Wave’s performance successes, the company’s stock has lagged the surging cybersecurity group in the past year. While Wave has worked to secure wider adoption of its technology, the company has been generating negative cash flow. Fundraising efforts such as the public offering the company closed last month have heavily weighed on the company’s stock.

The PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF HACK has climbed nearly 25 percent in the past six months, but shares of Wave Systems are down 19.8 percent during that time.