Armada Innovation Labs, a local firm that now primarily delivers penetration testings and bug bounty enablement services, has officially launched last December 2022 despite already being in the country for more than half a decade since 2016.
As part of its ongoing restructure, Armada Innovation Labs is limiting its services to three areas where it claims it is an “authority” in — penetration testing, bug bounty, and DevSecOps.
As of writing, the company is yet to share a response on whether this focus on three areas is a result of the organization failing to gain traction in offering its end-to-end security solutions or simply focusing on its most popular services here in the Philippines.
Back in 2018, the firm boasted an “army of security experts in 360-degree cybersecurity solutions,” even covering their customer’s strategic development and management. Today, Armada Innovation Labs put its focus on Web applications security, directly addressing the vulnerabilities of modern Web-based application firewalls.
“I chose cybersecurity because I knew it had a lot of potential, I knew it will be in-demand, and I knew if I go to this path I will be able to overcome poverty,” Armada Innovation Labs founder and chief architect Dean Armada said in a statement.
Vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform HackerOne recently reported that its community of ethical hackers last year unearthed 65,000 software vulnerabilities mainly attributed to digital transformation projects.
Poised to unlock P5 trillion in annual economic value by 2030 through full digital transformation, the Philippines has no shortage of digitization-centric initiatives. Aligned with the E-Commerce Philippine 2022 Roadmap, even governing bodies are helping to address low digital adoption among MSMEs and digital skills gap among the workforce.
F5, a multi-cloud application services and security company that Armada Innovation Labs has partnered with, says that most businesses today run on applications — from online banking and hybrid work platforms to personal entertainment and e-commerce.
In the company’s website, it also adds that more than 75% of all cybercrime activities are targeting applications, and enterprises are protecting themselves from these malicious actors via web application firewalls (WAFs), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and a variety of validation methods.
As a partner, Armada Innovation Labs manages the all the Web application firewall solutions from a customers chosen security vendor, identifies where potential breaches can occur, analyzes the preparedness of security measures in case of an attack, and guides the customer through insight-driven recommendations and mentoring.
Beyond penetration testing and bug bounty, Armada Innovation Labs adds another layer of value to customers through its fully-customizable customer simulation environment called “STYX”.
The platform is designed to test real-world infrastructure through different security appliances offered by vendors and malware from its repository. Initially intended for mentoring and consulting, Styx helps customers perform DevSecOps by learning how each attack can be mitigated or addressed.
