Many companies approach cybersecurity from a variety of angles, but one of the recent, popular approaches is known as “cyber fusion”. This strategy focuses on creating a centralized place for secure collaboration, information sharing, and enhanced threat visibility. Cyware Labs enables companies to build these cyber fusion centers, allowing organizations to effectively collaborate to create a stronger, collective defense. The rise of distributed workforces has created more opportunities for Cyware Labs as remote teams have created a whole new set of cybersecurity concerns that need to be managed by multiple teams across various departments.
AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Anuj Goel to learn more about how the company is removing security silos, fundraising during the pandemic, and recent funding round, which brings the total funding raised to f $13M across two rounds.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $10M in Series A. The investors were the Prelude Fund (the venture practice at Mercato Partners), Tanium, a provider of unified endpoint management and security, and our seed investors, Emerald Development Managers and Great Road Holdings.
Tell us about the product or service that Cyware offers.
Cyware offers the technology organizations need to build a virtual cyber fusion center. With separate but integrated solutions including an advanced threat intel platform (TIP), vendor-agnostic security automation (SOAR), and security case management, organizations are able to increase speed and accuracy while reducing costs and analyst burn out. Cyware’s virtual cyber fusion solutions make secure collaboration, information sharing, and enhanced threat visibility a reality for enterprises, sharing communities (ISAC/ISAO), MSSPs, and government agencies of all sizes and needs.
What inspired the start of Cyware?
Although most large organizations have plenty of security tools and staff, they lack the capabilities to integrate and communicate with each other to create a stronger, collective defense. The idea was to start a company to build a virtual cyber fusion solution that accomplished all the positive attributes of brick and mortar fusion centers, but without the exponential cost.
How is Cyware different?
Our virtual cyber fusion solution is the next evolution of Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR). It emphasizes proactive engagement as the core of cybersecurity strategy. The company’s goal is to help change the ecosystem of cybersecurity and optimize security operations by eliminating security team silos within organizations. The rise of distributed workforces, rapidly evolving cybercriminals, and rising security threats makes our solution even more relevant today.
What market does Cyware target and how big is it?
We target all markets where cybersecurity is a priority. We have seen the most interest so far in financial services, healthcare, retail, and critical infrastructure.
What’s your business model?
Cyware solutions are offered via a software subscription model either in the cloud via SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or via on-premise deployment.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
We have seen increased interest for our solutions since the pandemic started. Cybersecurity remains a priority for organizations and the need for flexible solutions that can fit varying environments and requirements has only grown.
What was the funding process like?
We had interest from the very beginning and wanted to take our time to find true partners who understood both cybersecurity and our vision. COVID-19 certainly led to some challenges and ultimately a longer process as organizations dealt with uncertainty.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The uncertainty that came with the beginning of COVID-19. Everyone was pausing or slowing down business activities to see how things would shake out and eventually settle down. It did not lessen investor interest in Cyware, but it did lead to a longer process overall. VCs may have been more hesitant during a time of unknowns and they wanted to spend more time validating and confirming things before moving forward. For example, something that may have taken 4-5 meetings was now taking 10 meetings.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our vision resonated well with their investment strategy and market outlook. We have a wealth of experience in our leadership and amongst our advisors.
Furthermore, our fundamentals are strong. Our financial metrics are even stronger. Cyware has been growing aggressively over the last two years and the momentum has only increased during the pandemic.
We are filling the market gap with our virtual cyber fusion center, threat intelligence, incident response, and security automation solutions.
Everything is aligning perfectly, so financial prudence also strongly supports the reasoning for our investors for making this decision of investing in Cyware.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Accelerated growth and scaling of our team. We plan to expand our sales and marketing teams, double down on customer success, and continue use case innovation and product enhancements.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Never stop innovating and looking for ways to succeed. Look beyond traditional best practices and tactics and don’t be afraid to try new things. Aim to fail fast, learn from it, and apply new understanding to your next strategy.
Never stop innovating and looking for ways to succeed. Look beyond traditional best practices and tactics and don’t be afraid to try new things. Aim to fail fast, learn from it, and apply new understanding to your next strategy.
As the world is experiencing an unprecedented time of uncertainty, companies’ strategies need to continue to evolve to meet changing customer needs whether they are business-related or in their personal lives.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We expect the aggressive growth momentum that we have witnessed over the last two years to continue as we expand our sales and marketing teams, redefine customer success and extend our line of innovative solutions and use cases.
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