Fishtech Group scales CYDERES, leaping into deep end of global cybersecurity market

National accolades and an expansion into Northwest Arkansas are feeding the latest round of rapid scaling at the Gary Fish-led Fishtech Group. 

Fishtech Group Cyber Security Operation Center (CSOC), Cyber Defense Center

“Hitting the MSSP list for the first time at No. 25 is a huge honor and an endorsement of CYDERES’ position in the managed service market,” Eric Foster, CYDERES Chief Operating Officer, said of the company’s recent recognition by MSSP Alert — a digital publication focused on cybersecurity. 

An annual cull published by MSSP Alert, the MSSP list tracks the world’s top managed security services providers. CYDERES is a “technology-agnostic” platform of Fishtech’s Martin City operations.

Click here to view the 2019 list which featured 200 companies. 

“Its rewarding and fulfilling to be in this position, truly trying to make a difference in the overall security of the internet,” Foster added. “We’re experiencing tremendous growth in our customer base and tremendous growth in the team and everything else … it’s fantastic.”

An advantage for CYDERES, Fishtech’s resources and the knowledge of company leaders — including Foster and Fish — have helped drive overall sales growth in CYDERES second year, with the company up 585 percent in the third quarter, Foster noted. 

Operating for just two years so far, CYDERES’s swift rise in the rankings could be attributed to the startup’s focus on extensive service offerings that go beyond monitoring activity from a control center and solve a number of additional pain points, he added. 

“Cybersecurity as an industry is facing a number of really significant challenges. One of them being that there’s a real shortage of available, good and affordable talent,” Foster noted, further explaining CYDERES and Fishtech Group’s commitment to easing tensions caused by such a shortage in tech talent. 

“We’re very successfully solving that for our clients and providing them cybersecurity solutions as a service so an organization can get a true extension of their team when they’re having trouble hiring people who can help them protect and defend their organization,” he said. 

Gary Fish, Fishtech Group

With no shortage of talent in the Kansas City-area, Fishtech Group has grown its team to more than 200 people and will invest in a secondary cyber security operations center, or “CSOC”, in Northwest Arkansas, Foster revealed. 

“[The secondary center] will help to support a couple of major clients in Northwest Arkansas, but virtually 90-plus percent of our people are in the Kansas City-area. … We’re very excited to be doing this in Kansas City,” he said of Fishtech’s growing campus in Martin City. “Gary continues to make fantastic investments in the area and in the facilities. I couldn’t be more excited about what we’re doing here and how we’re having an impact on real people’s lives.”

Click here to read about the recent opening of Fishtech’s $10 million, Martin City Cyber Defense Center.

Such a focus has helped Fishtech establish itself as a company with meaning, Foster said. 

“It’s not just a faceless corporation that has hundreds of thousands or even millions to lose from a cybersecurity breach,” he said. “The kind of threats that we see on a day to day basis … it’s people losing their paychecks or even small to mid-size businesses because their business operations had disrupted or their payroll’s been disrupted or other things like that.” 

Click here to read about how Fishtech workers created an app to tackle a local transportation headache.

The MSSP Alert ranking is all the more impactful because CYDERES didn’t even make the list last year, Foster said.

“Last year was our first year in business and we were just getting started … just getting our name out there,” he said. “To leapfrog 175 other cybersecurity service providers to be among the top in the world — in only our second year in business — is a tremendous accomplishment and the team immediately gets fired up about how we get into the top 10 next year.”

The company expects to see even more growth upon the close of the fourth quarter, Foster said.

What Is Cyderes from Fishtech Group on Vimeo.