Cybersecurity services that go beyond standard offerings

RT&Co. Cybersecurity (formerly known as Mantua Cybersecurity) led by husband and wife team, Jonathan and Cel Mantua, focus on tailoring solutions to each client’s unique needs. Cel, who is the chief operating officer, explained,“There are standards and fixed methodologies. But to us, we believe that every client’s situation is different so we have to adjust and tweak.

“We always believe in the Pareto Principle, 80:20. So 80-percent of the time we have the fixed methodologies and all, but then we tailor fit it to the client’s requirements.” 

Skills for hire

Cel described the company’s structured process of hiring fresh graduates and providing them with specialised training in various cybersecurity roles, running the company in an academy-like manner to foster continuous learning and development.

With this academic-style talent development coupled with a unique service model, RT&Co. hopes to address the current shortage of cybersecurity talent plaguing the industry worldwide. Professing to be an external cybersecurity team for its clients, Cel explained that its clients in Philippines and Singapore will hire RT&Co. to use their cybersecurity tools on their behalf.

The company will even consult and train client organisations, helping to upskill existing IT personnel and educate them about best practices in the process.

Expertise for hire

In this way, the company is helping its clients assess a particular product’s fit with their needs.

“Because every client has a different situation with different IT systems, and hence different ways of using some solutions. We help them assess suitability (of solutions) during the proof-of-concept (POC) phase,” Cel said, sharing a real-life incident in Singapore where a business that purchased cybersecurity hardware, found it did not have the know-how to configure it for use.

Shockingly, this is a situation that exists in large companies. “We come into Fortune 500 companies that have all these equipment with really great features… and nobody’s using them or optimising them,” Cel observed.

CEO Jonathan added, “This is a challenge, and it plays into the whole narrative that there is not enough cybersecurity talent. I believe we are able to contribute to the solution not just in the Philippines and Singapore, but also in the greater ASEAN region.”

Addressing gaps

Another gap that Cel and Jonathan have observed is with SOC, or security operations centre, capabilities that are offered as a packaged service. “There are a lot of times when it seems there is still a gap in the monitoring (of anomalous behaviour).

“Because (security) is sold as a package, it is not really aligned to the client’s requirements. That’s where we come in because Jonathan is focused on technology, and I am focused on processes and governance,” Cel said.

In essence, she finds it is not enough to purchase solutions because cybersecurity has become an operational issue. Many organisations see security operations as being rules-based when it could actually benefit from a behavioural analysis capability, for example.

“We employ ‘machine learning engineers’,” Cel said, explaining that RT&Co. Cybersecurity wants to brand itself as offering highly technical expertise. “There’s analysis, there is research, and we even create customised scripts for our penetration testing tools, for example.”

Human-powered detection in action

RT&Co. Cybersecurity also offers email phishing detection service that blends technology with human analysis to protect organisations from these evolving threats. When an employee in a high-risk department – such as HR, accounting, or procurement – receives a suspicious email, it is easy to report the threat with a single click. 

Unlike traditional setups where such alerts are routed to an overburdened internal IT team, these reports go directly to its dedicated cybersecurity analysts.

Every flagged email is reviewed by a human analyst, ensuring that no threat slips through the cracks and that legitimate business communications aren’t mistakenly quarantined.

The result is a rapid and highly reliable response often within five to ten minutes – on whether an email is safe to open or not.

Gartner-recognised

According to Cel, “For the longest time, we’ve been telling ourselves that we’re doing things right and now we want to validate it. So we’re working with Gartner in terms of whether our service offerings are actually up to global standards.”

This exercise is not only to ensure that the company is focused on areas that are important and relevant, but it also serves as continuous engagement so RT&Co. Cybersecurity is able to improve their internal processes and offerings.