How can businesses take control of the security crisis that is controlling us? There are two choices. Either collaborate to harden defenses and innovate or stay stuck in the perfect storm created by the emerging technologies and attackers’ ability to use them against us. “Riding out” the storm is clearly NOT an option. Find out how to strengthen your business.
From script: To take Virilio’s ship metaphor further, security professionals are putting in measures, best practices, mapping systems, lighthouses and beacons in order to reap the benefits of new innovations while managing potentially catastrophic risks. Organizations are working tirelessly to avoid being like the Titanic. You certainly see it. And as we work with clients, we see it first hand, every single day, all across the globe.
Source info: As funding from venture capitalists tapered off in the fourth quarter of 2015, investment in the cybersecurity sector continued to boom, Cat Zakrzewski reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. Venture capitalists invested $675.43 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, up from $522.41 million in the same quarter a year before, according to data from Dow JonesVentureSource. Total annual venture capital funding in cybersecurity increased 76%, to $3.34 billion, in 2015.
Synlogic has secured $40 million in Series B financing to advance its own “synthetic biotic” treatments for the rare conditions urea cycle disorder and phenylketonuria. New investor OrbiMed HealthCare Fund Management led the financing, which also included new backer Deerfield Management and founding investors Atlas Venture and New Enterprise Associates.
ZeaKal Inc., a San Diego-based agricultural tech startup, has raised $5.3 million in Series B venture funding in a round led by Finistere Ventures, with Middleland Capital and other family office investors participating, for its GMO technology to make soybeans and rice more-efficient crops, for starters.
CensorNet Ltd., a venture backed cloud security company, said it has agreed to acquire SMS Passcode, a multifactor authentication startup.
Mobify Research and Development Inc. has raised $10 million in Series A financing to scale its mobile customer engagement technology. Munich-based Acton Capital Partners led the round, with participation by undisclosed individual investors.
Palantir Technologies Inc. is acquiring Kimono Labs Inc. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Kimono Labs offers a tool to visualize and pull data from websites and apps.
Ukraine power grid attack: As many as 80,000 residents in western Ukraine lost power for six hours on December 23. Cybersecurity firms SANS ICS and iSight Partners have attributed the blackout to Russian hacking group Sandworm and its malicious software, BlackEnergy 3. This might have been the first use of cyber as a weapon with kinetic effects during an ongoing conflict.
Water treatment system attack: Verizon reported that hackers breached a water utility and manipulated systems responsible for water treatment and flow control. The hackers altered settings related to water flow and the amount of chemicals used to treat the water. Investigators said they discovered four separate connections over a 60-day period. Verizon pointed out that the attackers likely had little knowledge of how the flow control system worked and that the attack could have had far more serious consequences if hackers had more time and more knowledge of the targeted industrial control systems (ICS).
Attack on Japanese nuclear center: Computer hackers infiltrated a server installed at a Japanese facility that oversees the handling of plutonium and other nuclear materials. No data at the facility was compromised, but hackers used the server as a relay point in a cyber-attack on some other system.
From script: My hypothesis is that two things are happening:
There’s been huge growth in advisory services around compliance and global risk and compliance (GRC).
We’ve also experienced a tremendous increase in a whole series of point solutions and technologies.
Yet, neither one nor the other, nor the two together, have solved the problem. Pure advisory services don’t do it, a proliferation of point solutions that is coming at us faster than we can even evaluate them doesn’t do it.
SOURCE: In January 2016, Momentum Partners published the Cybersecurity Market Review (Q4 2015). Their CyberScape map depicts the complexity and vastness of the Cyber Security industry.
From script: So how can we take control of this security crisis that is controlling us?
We have two choices. Either we collaborate to harden our defenses and innovate … or we stay stuck in the perfect storm created by the emerging technologies and our attackers’ ability to use them against us. “Riding out” the storm is clearly NOT an option. Add “strengthen our industries” here so it previews all three points below.