💰 Security, Funded #85 - SVB Shockwaves Continue, Texting About Bank Failures, and GPT-4 Has Entered the Chat

Hey there,

Happy Monday, and I hope you had a great weekend!

In this week's issue:

• SVB Shockwaves Continue
• Texting About Bank Failures
• GPT-4 Has Entered the Chat

Credit Suisse had to borrow $50B+ from the Swiss National Bank to not fail (after a history of really bad practices and fines), First Republic got a $30B bailout from the top 11 US banks to try and calm the banking system down, the European Central Bank (ECB) raises rates again, OpenAI released GPT-4 (Twitter thread bois are flooding social media about how everyone is using it wrong already), the US Consumer Pricing Index (CPI) showed inflation went down slightly last month,

SVB shockwaves continue last week, and there continues to be uncertainty in the global banking ecosystem. Understandably, this is a challenging time for many in the finance world. If you are a parent, you may want to see if your kids are talking about “bank runs” and “banking system failures,” so I put together this quick guide to help:

Earnings Reports

Get ready for the return of crypto bois, laser eye profile pics, and diamond hand HODLing 💎🙌.

Earnings Reports

• ZeroFox (ZFOX) - missed its earnings revenue target just slightly but had strong growth from its subscription business. (not a great vibe to have your first earnings call as a public company right after the startup and venture capital banking industry imploded 😬)
• SentinelOne (S) - beat its earnings estimate and grew annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 88% YoY, crossed an important milestone at >10,000 customers, and the CEO said he thinks “cloud security is a bigger opportunity than endpoint security.” The new partnership with Wiz should help in the coming quarters too, and SentinelOne also said they were replacing Microsoft just like CrowdStrike said.

Onward to this week's issue.

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🛞 Industry News Roundup

• Data breaches cost Canadian businesses nearly $6M on average (more)
• Business Email Compromise Doubles in 2022 (more)
• Companies are struggling to keep corporate secrets out of ChatGPT (more)

📅 YTD Funding

A running total and evolving series of charts for the year-to-date (YTD) funding and by the week or month of the year.

The discrepancy between 2022 and 2023 could have a lot more to do with the global banking headwinds and SVB shockwaves than the time of the year. Almost every cyber company I know is gearing up for a big launch or campaign for the upcoming RSA Conference in April, and this is about the time that funding checks start dropping.

💰 Weekly Funding Summary

• 9 companies raised $61.2M across 9 unique product categories
• 5 companies were acquired or had a merger event for $38.0M across 4 unique product categories

🧩 Funding By Product Category

• $20.0M for Confidential Computing across 1 deal
• $15.7M  for Secure Networking across 1 deal
• $13.0M  for Security Operations across 1 deal
• $11.3M for Threat Intelligence across 1 deal
• $1.1M for Fraud and Financial Crime Protection across 1 deal
• $94.6K for Application Security across 1 deal
• An undisclosed amount for SaaS Security across 1 deal
• An undisclosed amount for Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) across 1 deal
• An undisclosed amount for Data Protection across 1 deal

🏢 Funding By Company

• HUB Security, an Israel-based confidential computing platform, raised a $20.0M Post-IPO Equity from A-Labs Advisory & Finance. (more)
• dope.security, a United States-based secure web gateway (SWG) and networking platform, raised a $15.7M Venture Round.
• Mitiga, an Israel-based cloud-based incident response platform, completed a $13.0M Series A (for a total of $45 million) from ClearSky. (more)
• Recorded Future, a United States-based threat intelligence platform, raised a $11.3M Venture Round.
• Staging Labs, a United States-based cryptocurrency and digital asset protection secure backup platform, raised a $1.1M Pre-Seed from The General Partnership, AGBuild, Flourish Ventures, and NGC Ventures.
• OpenRefactory, a United States-based application security platform focused on assisted bug remediation, raised a $95.0K Seed from Startup Bangladesh Limited. (more)
• Grip Security, an Israel-based SaaS data security and access management platform, raised an undisclosed Venture Round from The Syndicate Group. (more)
• Securiti, a United States-based multi-cloud data protection and privacy company, raised an undisclosed Venture Round from Capital One Ventures and Citi Ventures. (more)
• Secuvy, a United States-based data posture management platform for security and privacy workflows, raised an undisclosed Seed from Dell Technologies Capital. (more)

🌎 Funding By Country

• $33.0M for Israel 🇮🇱
• $28.2M for United States 🇺🇸

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• Minerva Labs, an Israel-based endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform, was acquired by Rapid7 for $38.0M. (more)
• AdvizeX, a United States-based managed services provider (MSP), was acquired by Fulcrum IT Partners for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Clearshark, a United States-based professional services firm focused on cybersecurity in the federal and defense sectors, was acquired by Optiv for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Identiverse, the United States-based creators of the KNOW Identity cybersecurity conference and industry events, was acquired by CyberRisk Alliance for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Warren Systems Group, a United States-based professional services firm focused on data security and training, was acquired by Fairdinkum Consulting for an undisclosed amount. (more)

📚 Great Reads

• Why do senior executives buy from early-stage cybersecurity startups? - Andrew Monaghan, who runs the Sales Bluebird podcast, talks through three reasons why people buy from early-stage cybersecurity startups.
• CISOs Emerge From CIOs’ Shadow - Companies are moving to avoid internal conflicts of interest by requiring cybersecurity leaders to report to executives outside the technology group, including the chief executive.
• Why Security Practitioners Should Understand Their Business - The sooner CISOs become proactive in understanding the flip side of the organizations they protect, the better they'll be at their jobs.

🐝 Cross Pollinate

Discover something 🆕 this week.

Matt is only a few issues in his new newsletter, but it’s already gaining traction with deep dives into various security concepts and how we, as security practitioners, think and approach problem-solving.

Vulnerable U

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🧪 Labs

In light of all of these things happening with banks, it’s important to remember how far banking innovation and cybersecurity have come.

Also, banks aren’t all that bad! They did give us this absolute banger, after all.

🤔 Have questions, comments, or feedback? I'd love to hear from you!

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