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- 💰 Security, Funded #87 - Q1 is A Wrap, A Pause on AI, and Twitter Blue Blues
💰 Security, Funded #87 - Q1 is A Wrap, A Pause on AI, and Twitter Blue Blues
Hey there,
Happy Monday, and I hope you had a great weekend!
In this week's issue:
Q1 Is A Wrap
A Pause on AI
Twitter Blue Blues
Microsoft introduces Security Copilot, Elon Musk and several other CEOs call for a “pause” on AI developments greater than GPT-4 to understand the risks, Twitter is seeing a wave of popular people and organizations pushing back against the paid verification of Twitter Blue, Italy temporarily bans ChaptGPT and Generative AI over data privacy concerns, and a supply chain attack 3CX customers around the world.
Earning Reports
That’s a wrap for Q1 2023 for all the significant public cybersecurity companies and their earnings reports! With Q1 data now behind us across sectors, we’ll start to see data and trend reports trickle in over the next few weeks. What I can say is that funding is significantly down from Q1 2022, and I’m going to be doing a deeper dive report on this later this week. Stay tuned!
The Twitter Blue checks are now identical to the legacy verified accounts on Twitter prior to Elon Musk buying Twitter. This is, ironically, creating issues of authenticity for verified accounts on Twitter.
These Twitter Blue blues comes at a pivotal time in our existence. With the absolute rocketship in the advancements of generative AI systems, being able to prove you are a human to other humans is going to become extremely important. Social media companies know this and are trying to get people to pay for the privilege of being a verified human, and of course, this is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way who don’t want to pay. This is going to create a whole new wave of impersonation and scam attempts from even moderately notable figures if they do not pay to play.
Did anyone have on their threat models that AI bots could take over all of your online presence if you don’t pay for verification?
To quote Corporal Hicks from the movie Aliens, “stay frosty, and alert.”
Onward to this week's issue.
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🛞 Industry News Roundup
📅 YTD Funding
A rolling 12-week chart to compare funding each week between 2022 and 2023.
Volume in 2023 continues to remain lower than in 2022, not just across cybersecurity, but across all sectors. As we are now in the month of RSA, I expect many funding announcements to be waiting for the right time to amplify their impact.
Stay tuned for a deeper dive on Q1 2022 vs. Q1 2023 later this week.
💰 Funding Summary
13 companies raised $102.2M across 11 unique product categories
3 companies were acquired or had a merger event across 3 unique product categories for $200.0M
🧩 Funding By Product Category
$42.0M for Anti-Bot across 1 deal
$16.0M for Operational Technology (OT) Security across 1 deal
$11.5M for Anti-Malware across 1 deal
$10.9M for Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) across 2 deals
$10.0M for Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) across 1 deal
$5.0M for Security Awareness across 1 deal
$1.6M for Data Privacy across 2 deals
$150.0K for Application Security Testing (AST) across 1 deal
An undisclosed amount for Third-Party Risk Management across 1 dealAn undisclosed amount for Email Security across 1 deal
🏢 Funding By Company
DataDome, a United States-based bot and fraud protection platform, raised a $42.0M Series C from InfraVia Capital Partners. (more)
SCADAfence, an Israel-based operational technology (OT) security platform, raised a $16.0M Venture Round from Global Brain Corporation. (more)
Votiro, a United States-based anti-malware platform for files, emails, and collaboration platforms, raised an $11.5M Series A from Harvest Lane Asset Management. (more)
Sesame IT, a France-based managed security services provider (MSSP), raised a $10.9M Venture Round from 115K, astorya.vc, Banque des Territoires, and BNP Paribas.
Spera, an Israel-based identity posture and risk management platform, raised a $10.0M Seed from YL Ventures. (more)
Hypori, a United States-based secure remote access platform for Android mobile devices, raised $5.0M to complete its $23.0M Series B round from Moore Strategic Ventures and Hale Capital Partners. (more)
Right-Hand Cybersecurity, a Singapore-based security awareness and training simulation platform, raised a $5.0M Series A from AZ-VC. (more)
PrivacyHawk, a United States-based consumer and business data privacy management platform, raised a $1.6M Venture Round.
CyDeploy, a United States-based virtual testing platform for measuring the impact of security scanning, patches, and changes, raised a $150.0K Pre-Seed from TEDCO. (more)
Trūata, an Ireland-based data management and privacy platform making confidential data shareable, raised a $50.0K Grant from Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Prize Challenges.
Northrock Systems, a managed security services provider (MSSP), raised an undisclosed Pre-Seed round
Panorays, a United States-based platform that automates the third-party security review process, raised an undisclosed Series C from 33N Ventures. (more)
🌎 Funding By Country
$60.2M for United States across 8 deals 🇺🇸
$26.0M for Israel across 2 deals 🇮🇱
$10.9M for France across 1 deal 🇫🇷
$5.0M for Singapore across 1 deal 🇸🇬
$49.5K for Ireland across 1 deal 🇮🇪
🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions
Lightspin, an Israel-based cloud security workload protection platform, was acquired by Cisco for $200.0M. (more)
Onward Security, a Taiwan-based connected and autonomous vehicle security (CAVS) platform, was acquired by Dekra for an undisclosed amount. (more)
Volar Security, a United States-based professional services firm focused on governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), merged with Unified Solutions for an undisclosed amount. (more)
📚 Great Reads
Shift Your Mindset from Conflict to Collaboration to Succeed in Security - The combative mindset of security professionals and the cybersecurity vs. everyone way of operating is counterproductive. Lenny Zeltser gives his view on how we can change that and improve security relations.
Chat GPT & AI a growing concern for cyber insurance - Cyber insurance companies are starting to ask about the usage of ChatGPT, Large Language Models (LLMs), and generative AI on insurance applications now.
FS-ISAC Navigating Cyber Report - The FS-ISAC (Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center), an important cybersecurity group for the financial services sector, releases its 2023 threat intelligence report (PDF).
🐝 Cross Pollinate
Discover something 🆕 this week.
Jason Haddix just started a new newsletter called Executive Offense that's at the center of offensive security and security strategy. This is a good mixture of low-level concepts brought up to high-level impacts, which is a really hard translation spectrum to walk:
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🧪 Labs
Your move, AI 😤👊
Is this considered black hat SEO? pic.twitter.com/y84FQyXhfw— Chris Tweten 🍁 | SaaS SEO (@ctwtn) March 26, 2023
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