Photo credit: Tony Smailagic
Right now, sitting behind their keyboards in various cities throughout the world, countless hackers are testing the boundaries of your networks. Your bank, your corner bakery, your favorite streaming platform; nobody is safe. You’re an even bigger target if you’re a small or midsize business owner with anywhere from one to 100 employees and less than $1 billion in revenue. With less disposable capital, your data is nowhere near as protected as the Fortune 1,000s who can afford the hefty price tag of white hat security analysts… and cybercriminals know their market.
In the Wild West, only an outlaw could outpace another outlaw. In today’s yet-to-be-tamed Internet landscape, only an accomplished hacker can outsmart another hacker. Kyle Hanslovan spent more than half his life in the trenches of the dark web. What began as a curiosity grew into a full-blown obsession powerful enough to propel a defiant teenager from the Florida slums into the highest ranks of the NSA cyber warfare unit.
Throughout a remarkable 25-year career, Hanslovan remained one step ahead of the world’s best hackers, eventually pioneering a business model that continues to revolutionize the entire field of cybersecurity. Among the keys to his success, the foremost is that he knows his enemies. The self-made titan of his industry and the nefarious data thieves he proudly thwarts share an impenetrable will to render any network vulnerable – the one to shore up its defenses, the other to exploit its secrets.
Photo credit: Jade Umbrella
“If you want to outsmart a hacker, you have to play the game like they do,” Hanslovan reveals. “They don’t care about office politics or ‘the way things have always been done.’ They only care about what works.” Break what needs to be broken and build what needs to be built.
For Hanslovan, that meant Huntress needed to operate differently than any cybersecurity outfit before it, predicated on an innovative framework: that data breaches are not an anomaly. In this new Internet era, they are the norm rather than the exception. According to this approach, Huntress’ goal is not to halt every single hacker but rather to mitigate any issue so quickly that business owners aren’t impeded from doing business.
Once Hanslovan proved the viability of his methods, his next step aimed to multiply his efforts. Any great hacker knows that success is found in rapid replication. Here again, success depends on setting aside every obstruction, including ego. Hanslovan seeks to construct a nimble team capable of evolving with the hacker movement. That means hiring people smarter than him and being extremely honest about who’s best for the job – even his own. “I have to reassess every year whether I’m the best candidate to take this company forward. My pride and self-image can’t get in the way of progress.”
Perhaps most notably, Huntress follows the example of its more villainous counterparts in the way it views failure. Whereas the prevailing mindset of modern business centers on avoiding risk, that’s not how hackers behave. “If you fail 9,999 times trying to access a network, it doesn’t matter as long as you succeed that 10,000th time.” The greater concern is persistence. You have to be willing to try anything and, if it fails, keep trying until you hit the mark.
So what advice might Hanslovan give to a fellow business owner struggling against fierce competition? Don’t hate the player, sharpen your aim. “Leave it to Ice-T to offer some of the best wisdom in modern business. If you can’t stand to see someone else succeed, don’t waste your time hating them; develop your own game-winning strategy.” Competition can push you to new levels of achievement if you let it.
For Hanslovan, that moment came after he’d turned down multiple employment offers from Fortune 500s to pursue a vision of his own… only to be laughed out of the office by every potential investor. Instead of giving up, he doubled down, using the experience to fuel his motivation toward a venture that is now valued at over $1.5 billion. In the end, it all comes back to the initial passion of that scrappy teen intent on pushing boundaries, the brash vigilante who does it simply for the love of the game.