💰 Security, Funded #121 - Post-Turkey Tech Talk: AI Ethics & Cyber Deals on the Table🍗

Hey there,

Happy Cyber Monday to all those who celebrate! If you celebrated Thanksgiving last week, I hope you had a great time off with friends and family. In this week’s issue, we’ve got:

• 🔥 Cyber Monday is still hot

• 😴 Funding takes a quick snooze

• 🍽️ AI ethics, safety, and security are on the menu

• 📚 Pacific cybercrime hubs and Biden’s AI Executive Order

AI as far as the eye can see.

Last week, I got the chance to attend a dinner hosted by IQ Capital on the topic of Cybersecurity for AI in London. The attendees were a mixture of investors, AI researchers, government groups, and startup founders trying to tackle the space. Plus me who gets to ping pong between many of these spaces 😎 

The discussions centered around the lines of AI safety, ethical decision-making pre and post-model decisions, training data supply chains, CISO concerns around bringing AI in-house, and the cyber implication of attacking and defending generative AI models. It was a great conversation and food to boot, Shout to Jonno for the invite!

Are you going to Black Hack Europe next week? Do you want a Security, Funded sticker? The answer may surprise you. I’ll be there a few days next week and would love to meet up or say hello!

Last but not least, you may also notice a look and feel change to the site and newsletter, not the least of which is a new Return On Security logo from the team at Miscreants that I love! What better way to celebrate Cyber Monday than with a new cyber logo?!

Have an upcoming deal to share? Looking for funding? Looking for companies to fund? Drop me a message at [email protected].

Onward to this week's issue.

Last week’s vibe check:
If your company is using OpenAI services, is everyone at your company now doing the mad CEO switcheroo shuffle to get off the platform?

Inertia is one of the most powerful forces on earth (only second to compound interest). It’s clear that the overwhelming majority of companies don’t have any plans to move off of OpenAI, even as the latest season of Silicon Valley played out over Twitter (X) last week. Where OpenAI and the future of AI go from here is anyone’s guess. Here’s a summary of how it unfolded:

📸 YTD Snapshot

A rolling 12-week chart to compare funding and acquisitions each week between 2022 and 2023.

A moderate week on the deal volume and funding amount front last week. This appears to be in line with the post-Thanksgiving funding rest period from 2022, where many in the US took a break from announcing new deals. I see this as more of a timing delay than a decrease in deals. Everyone needs a bit of time off _{(not me though, I stay grinding for you on this newsletter} 👊 😤 _).

Same story on the acquisition front as with funding. It’s all about timing. We are now <10% shy of matching 2022 M&A activity with 5 weeks left to go in this calendar year. Let’s go! 🚀 

💰 Funding Summary

• 10 companies raised $170.2M across 10 unique product categories

• 5 companies were acquired or had a merger event across 3 unique product categories

🧩 Funding By Product Category

• $70.0M for Fraud and Financial Crime Protection across 1 deal

• $33.6M for Professional Services across 1 deal

• $27.3M for Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) across 1 deal

• $18.0M for Data Protection across 1 deal

• $10.0M for Trust & Safety across 1 deal

• $6.0M for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Security across 1 deal

• $3.3M for Data Privacy across 1 deal

• $1.5M for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection across 1 deal

• $383.2K for Identity Verification across 1 deal

• An undisclosed amount for Operational Technology (OT) Security across 1 deal

🏢 Funding By Company

• BioCatch, an Israel-based digital identity verification and fraud protection platform, raised a $70.0M Secondary Market from Sapphire Ventures. (more)

• Dream Security, an Israel-based critical infrastructure security consulting company, raised a $33.6M Seed from individual investors. (more)

• HarfangLab, a France-based endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform, raised a $27.3M Series A from Crédit Mutuel Innovation. (more)

• Privy, a United States-based API platform for encrypting Web3 user data, raised a $18.0M Series A from Paradigm. (more)

• Kodex, a United States-based trust and safety response platform for law enforcement response, raised a $10.0M Seed from Andreessen Horowitz. (more)

• Lasso Security, an Israel-based platform focused on secure Large Language Model (LLM) usage in enterprises, raised a $6.0M Seed from Entrée Capital. (more)

• Smarter Contracts, a United Kingdom-based blockchain-based data privacy consent management platform, raised a $3.3M Private Equity Round. (more)

• Blindspot Technologies, a Czech Republic-based distributed denial of services (DDoS) protection platform, raised a $1.5M Seed from Presto Ventures. (more)

• Magic ID, a United Kingdom-based Know Your Customer (KYC) and identity verification platform, raised a $383.0K Pre-Seed from Presto Ventures and SFC Capital. (more)

• Novaigu, a United States-based operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) security platform, raised an undisclosed Pre-Seed round.

🌎 Funding By Country

• $109.6M for Israel across 3 deals

• $28.0M for United States across 3 deals

• $27.3M for France across 1 deal

• $3.7M for United Kingdom across 2 deals

• $1.5M for Czech Republic across 1 deal

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• DRACOON GmbH, a Germany-based secure file sharing platform, was acquired by Kiteworks for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Enclave Technologies, an Ireland-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by Nostra for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Maytech, a United Kingdom-based secure file sharing platform, was acquired by Kiteworks for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• PureCS, a United Arab Emirates-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by PureHealth for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Tenax Solutions, a United States-based professional services firm focused on penetration testing and vulnerability remediation, was acquired by IP Pathways for an undisclosed amount. (more)

📚 Great Reads

• InfoSec Cyber Monday Deals - Black Friday has come and gone, but it’s Cyber Monday today, and many of these deals last until the end of the month! This has been a huge hit running over 5 years now and has just about everything a cybersecurity person would want.

• *Data Anonymization in AI: A Path Towards Ethical Machine Learning - dive into the importance of anonymizing data to prevent exposing sensitive personal information during the AI/ML training process.

• How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime - A small Pacific Island with only 1,400 residents became a hub for cybercrime due to its country-code top-level domain (ccTLD), and this post tracks the island's efforts in combatting the misuse of its domain and the ongoing struggle to reclaim and rehabilitate its digital identity.

• Biden's AI Executive Order: What it says, and what it means for security teams - Joseph Thacker delves into President Biden's 2023 Executive Order 14110 on AI and its impact on security teams managing and defending AI systems.

_{*Sponsored content and/or affiliate link.}

🧪 Labs

Me to every food I saw last week

Have an upcoming deal to share? Looking for funding? Looking for companies to fund? Drop me a message at [email protected].