Protecting Crypto Assets with a Unified Security Platform! with Mike O'Keefe

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, folks were recording at Chainlinks smart Con event and
joining me is Mike O'Keefe, who is the head of
sales and customer success at Immunify. Mike, great to have you.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Thanks for having me, Tony, it's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yeah, Mike, excited to learn about Immunify. But tell us
a bit about yourself and your background in crypto.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, it's a little bit of an interesting story how
I got here. So, I had about almost a decade
in Tradfy, previously mostly on the buy side, and then
I went into financial technology, working for first a data
aggregation and reporting provider for wealth management folks SO family Offices, Aris, etc. Sure,
then I jumped over to alternative data management and a

(00:44):
fintech startup. But in between I actually had a stop
with a customer of mine and we ended up launching
a company that became a nonprofit, and the nonprofit was
about fiduciary duty within financial services. And at the same time,
this is around twenty sixteen or so, I started very
interested in crypto myself, Sure, and I felt it was
a lack of fiduciary duty on the part of wealth

(01:06):
managers to not be considering how they would implement crypto
into the portfolios. Sure, So eventually years later the opportunity
to get into crypto security comes my way, and I
thought to myself, this is it. This is the key
to get rid of that career risk element that people
were feeling when they were managing portfolios in regards to
crypto and remove that and hopefully now we're seeing a

(01:27):
lot here at Smartcon this year, a lot of trad
five money coming on chain.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, it's incredible the amount of trad FI institutions that
are now building, whether they're launching et aps, tokenizing stable coins.
What is it like to see all these folks coming in?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know, I like to think I'm not that smart
of a guy, but I'm smart enough to follow really
smart people. And so that's one of the other reasons
I got into crypto is I started to see the
people who I admired, people I thought that were very intelligent,
be drawn to the space from the traditional finance spaces,
from financial services, from technology, and that really drove me here.

(02:03):
And there's so many brilliant people that are still working
in TRATFI that are starting to see exactly what I
can do for their customers or their businesses and how
you know this high tide can lift all boats.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
So tell us a bit about immunify. What is it
and what do you guys do?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, So we were founded about almost five years ago
now and we started bug bounties and crowd security. We
are by far the most successful bug bounty platform in
the web three space. We've paid out over one hundred
and twenty one million dollars worth of bounties to ethical
white hats or ethical hackers you might call them, or
security researchers. And recently we've started to expand our presence

(02:43):
to be a full chain, sorry, a full service solution
for on chain and off chain security. So we've created
a Magnus platform where folks can log in single point
of contact to manage as much of their security operations
as possible.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
What you guys, as you're doing is such a critical
component of the industry security right because regardless of if
tradfis here or whoever is here, if our assets are
not secure, if we can't stop bad actors and put
that buffer there, then it's all going to collapse. So
walk us through a bit about about how your what

(03:19):
your tech stack looks like to have the security layers
and who you're working with.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sure. Yeah, So we've taken a very purpose built approach
to security in that we have a lot of We
have the biggest library of vulnerability is available in the space,
so that's going to be hugely powerful. Sure, And the
other thing that we really value is different security points
of view in the place. Immunified does not want to

(03:45):
pretend that we can build the best technology for unchaine
monitoring as an example. Sure, there are a bunch of
players who have done that already, but there are a
bunch of things that we can build. So as an example,
we have our AI agent which is going to scan
all those vulnerabilities they just talked about and be able
to provide output to projects who are either in the
build stage via ploor request reviews or in the audit
stage doing the same thing as a compliment to to

(04:08):
humans in the loop, at least at this stage of
where we are today.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Additionally, we've come up with you know, our multi sick
transaction review as well as our flagship bug bounties, audits
and audit competitions. On the flip side, we've got many
great players who are doing things like on chain monitoring
or chain patrols, brand protection, which is hugely important for projects. Sure,
and we've started to integrate these best in class partners,

(04:34):
which you can see, you know, on our website or
if you can talk to us with our tools, to
have multiple security points of view, but still just have
that one touch point.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
So you're working. I see at a list here that
I put down chain Link, Ethereum Foundation, Optimism, arbitrump. It
sounds like you're working with the major blockchains to help
their improve their security.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah. So we've got over three hundred and thirty current customers.
We've serviced over five hundred customers projects, l ones, l
two's infrastructure, projects, oracles, you name it. We have a
solution for pretty much every type of project, every type
of Web three player in the game, and we have
pretty tight relationships with many of them, including the folks

(05:15):
here today.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
You mentioned the use of an AI agent, So are
you using AI in different ways to help accomplish what
you're doing?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
We are, right, So there's a few ways that we're
doing it. The first is pretty straightforward, and you're hearing
a lot about it, especially in like crypto Twitter, which
is like who can find the most bugs using an
AI agent, right, and so that's a little bit of
a bot race there. On the other hand, we also
have the orchestration piece, which is just like, how can
you bring all these security pieces together in a thoughtful way.

(05:44):
So one of the things we've done, as an example,
is we've got an ability to say, let's look at
your smart contracts, let's look at the deployers, and let's
see when a new contract is deployed, can we automatically
add protection to it without you touching a button? As
an example. Sure. The last thing is what we call
our guardian AI. It's I don't know what to do.
I'm mentoring the space. We are trad five players that

(06:08):
are coming into the space, and we want to know
how should we build out our security stack. And we've
simply implemented best practices into what we call our guardian
AI and it allows folks to ask basic questions two
very very intermediate or advanced questions of what should I
do next to advance my security posture?

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Man, I'm just thinking about a lot of the exploits
and things that have happened. Do you think that the
bad actors may also use AI and to try to
attack blockchains? And different things in the industry.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
I don't see why they wouldn't If it works for them, right,
if it's an available tool for for some of us,
why wouldn't they do it as well. The thing is
that we're you know, at least here at a meati
files at you know, in other places do have these
closed source repositories of what's going on. That's a little
bit you know at mass adoption should be a nice
tipping point for the space to make sure at least

(07:04):
you're fleshing out like those very common mistakes that people
can make.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Talk to us a bit about some of the common
threats that you're seeing across multiple blockchains.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, so, I think there's been events in the news
recently that are pretty common mistakes that we've seen over
the years that are again being brought into the news unfortunately.
Which is something that we all want to be mindful of,
is how do you stop us off? How do you
find it when it's on live production code with funds
at risk? And a lot of that comes down to

(07:36):
our bug balanties we've done. It's incredible job our our
security researcher community and finding those things. I think at
the end of the day. It really comes down to
just adding all those layers of Swiss cheese to the
stack and never getting complacent and always staying vigilant, right,
because you truly don't know when there's something hidden that

(07:57):
someone can exploit. And black hats have thee of being
patient where businesses do not have that advantage.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh for sure. And this is a dumb question and
I probably know the answer. But who's funding the bounties?
And so is the projects you're working with?

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, the projects themselves fund the bounties. Okay, so they
we work with them to decide what the funds at
risk might be, what an appropriate bounty size would be,
and then they will fund the bounties themselves. Got it.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
And what's on your roadmap? What can we expect in
twenty twenty six?

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh man, So we have a lot of really exciting
things on our roadmap, more integrations with security partners, a
few more firstart party tools that we'll be building. The
big thing that we're really excited about is we have
announced our token, and the token's utility is, frankly, to
keep the flywheel spinning between our partners, our projects, and

(08:48):
our security researchers. Sure and so I think we're creating
a really nice, a really nice economy with our token
so that folks can stake the token to make sure
that they stay more safe, and that incentivizes security researchers
and the partners UH to work with them to do so.

(09:10):
So I think that's the biggest change for our business
in the coming year and the coming months, even as
well as just the transition from being known as a
crowd security platform to having this hub and spoke approach
with the Magnus platform.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
M Now, one of the things folks are waiting for
is the Cloudy Act of Crypto Market Structure Bill to pass.
We know it's kind of stuck right now we government
shut down. How are you guys viewing that? Does I
don't know if you've that addresses security issues or things
like that, but you know, are there any commonalities common
ground there?

Speaker 2 (09:45):
You know, we typically just as a as our as
our general policy, don't really comment on regulation or or
legislation for really any government. We do participate in, you know,
working through it when we're able to participate in doing
that or giving our two cents into what that may be,

(10:07):
depending on the jurisdiction and Obviously, the nice thing about
a lot of the things we're working on is that
the security tools are put in place. The partners that
we have, we tend to make sure that they are
compliant or will be compliant with any regulation that comes along. So, okay,
that is something sort of as a service we'd almost provide,
is that to make sure that folks who have the
security posture are remaining compliant with any legislation that comes

(10:30):
in terms of specific legislation, we stay away from that
third rail to a specific or specific regulation to we
stay away from specifics there.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
But that's great that you offer that service and make
sure it helped them make sure they're compliant with what's
out the law.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, to the extent that we can, and if we can't,
we certainly have the partners who can help them.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
You know, are the folks are you working with TRADFI
institutions that are coming in who have security concerns and issues.
I don't know if you can name drop or you
could tell us the type of institutions that they are.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
So our goal from the beginning almost five years ago
and I've only been here for two and a half years,
but our goal has always been to bring more funds
on chain and security is the way to do that.
So we are absolutely working where and when we can
with the institutions or blockchains that are linked closely with institutions,
or infrastructure that is linked closely with institutions, like a

(11:24):
lot of the folks we're seeing here today, it's Marcan right,
and have services to provide them, or at the very
least our security Advisory arm can certainly do that as well. Right,
we see a lot of we know a lot about
the web two, we know a lot almost about the
web two point five spot now of where these things
start to integrate, and then we don't know a lot
once we get beyond that. How can you help us

(11:45):
in that regard? So working with a lot of the
l ones or the infrastructure projects or the oracles that
interact with these institutions is certainly right where we want
to be. That's also place where we've got solutions for
to help folks.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
PT got it, Mike, great stuff, Looking forward to the
future updates. Thank you so much for joining.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Me, Thank you for having me. It was really nice
to talk to you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
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