💰 Security, Funded #105 - Cloudy with a Chance of Earnings: A Wild Week of Wallets & Workloads ☁️💸

Hey there,

Happy Monday and Happy Hacker Summer Camp week to all those who celebrate!

🏃‍♂️ The Rundown

A meta roundup of all the important things affecting cybersecurity and the macroenvironment:

• 🤯 Crazy YTD funding and acquisition stats

• 🎩 Happy Black Hat and Hacker Summer Camp Week

• 🏢 18 companies secure $408.2M, 11 companies acquired

• 🤖 AI incidents, ChatGPT prompt attacks, federal regulations

• ⛈️ Fortinet missed earnings and new cloud workload yearnings

This week’s issue is coming live and direct from Black Hat in Las Vegas! 🎲 🎲 

I fully expect generative AI to be the main theme of this year’s conference, but I think we’ll see a lot more than just the standard “AI-enabled chatbot” features (not that any of those are bad, just common now). Will report back what the vibe and themes were like in next week’s issue.

Coming into this week we’ve got another large traunch of funding and acquisitions as the year continues to accelerate.

If you see me around, feel free to come up and say hello. I’d love to meet you! I’ve also got a super low number of Security, Funded stickers left to hand out, so find me if you want one.

Onward to this week's issue.

📅 YTD Funding

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

Another huge week of funding in terms of volume. Want to know what’s crazy? At only 6 weeks into Q3, total funding for this quarter is only ~11% less than ALL of the funding for Q3 2022 and there is still 8 weeks left to go.

Huge week for acquisitions as well, and we’re continuing to see the buy vs. build strategy play out for 2023. 2023 acquisitions have already surpassed all of 2022 acquisitions year to date. 🤯 

It’s a great time to go get acquired or do some acquiring.

💰 Funding Summary

• 18 companies raised $408.2M across 15 unique product categories

• 11 companies were acquired or had a merger event across 7 unique product categories

🧩 Funding By Product Category

• $175.0M for Secure Networking across 1 deal

• $90.0M for Software Supply Chain Security across 2 deals

• $38.0M for Breach & Attack Simulation (BAS) across 1 deal

• $24.0M for Threat Intelligence across 1 deal

• $15.0M for Cyber Insurance across 1 deal

• $14.2M for Network Security across 1 deal

• $12.5M for Threat and Risk Prioritization across 1 deal

• $10.2M for Data Protection across 2 deals

• $10.0M for Professional Services across 1 deal

• $8.0M for Application Security across 1 deal

• $5.3M for Identity and Access Management (IAM) across 1 deal

• $3.0M for Security Orchestration and Automated Response (SOAR) across 1 deal

• $3.0M for Cybersecurity Education & Training across 1 deal

• $100.0K for Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) across 1 deal

• An undisclosed amount for Threat & Vulnerability Management (TVM) across 2 deals

🏢 Funding By Company

• Nile, a United States-based secure networking platform, raised a $175.0M Series C from March Capital and Sanabil. (more)

• Endor Labs, a United States-based software supply chain security platform, raised a $70.0M Series A from Dell Technologies Capital, Section 32, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Coatue Management. (more)

• Horizon3.ai, a United States-based breach and attack simulation platform, raised a $38.0M Venture Round. (more)

• Cyble, a United States-based AI-powered darkweb and cybercrime monitoring platform, raised a $24.0M Series B from Blackbird Ventures and King River Capital. (more)

• Socket, a United States-based supply chain software security platform, raised a $20.0M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. (more)

• Converge, a United States-based cyber risk insurance company, raised a $15.0M Series A from Forgepoint Capital. (more)

• Zhongzhiwei Technology, a China-based network security platform, raised a $14.2M Series A from Security Capital.

• Silk Security, a United States-based threat and risk prioritization platform, raised a $12.5M Seed from Hetz Ventures and Insight Partners. (more)

• Plerion, an Australia-based professional services firm focused on cybersecurity consulting, raised a $10.0M Seed from Prosus Ventures. (more)

• Tromzo, a United States-based developer-first appsec management platform, raised an $8.0M Seed from Venture Guides. (more)

• Abbey Labs, a United States-based infrastructure access management and automation platform, raised a $5.3M Seed from  Point72 Ventures. (more)

• Hushmesh, a United States-based automated encryption key management platform, raised a $5.2M Venture Round from Paladin Capital Group. (more)

• Steg AI, a United States-based digital file watermarking and intellectual property protection platform, raised a $5.0M Series A from Paladin Capital Group. (more)

• Jericho Security, a United States-based cybersecurity training and education platform, raised a $3.0M Pre-Seed from Era and Lux Capital. (more)

• Tenzir, a Germany-based security orchestration and automated response (SOAR) platform, raised a $3.0M Seed from eCAPITAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTNERS. (more)

• Is7-Intel, a United States-based managed security services provider (MSSP), raised a $100.0K Seed.

• Guyuan Technology, a China-based threat and vulnerability management (TVM) platform, raised an undisclosed Seed.

• MITRE Corporation, a United States-based non-profit behind the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) scoring system that catalogs publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities, raised an undisclosed Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

🌎 Funding By Country

• $381.0M for United States across 14 deals

• $14.2M for China across 2 deals

• $10.0M for Australia across 1 deal

• $3.0M for Germany across 1 deal

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• Cyber Cloud Technologies, a United States-based professional services firm focused on cybersecurity consulting, was acquired by T-Rex Solutions for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• CyberlinkASP, a United States-based managed services provider (MSP), was acquired by Seaport Capital for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Fultura, a Guernsey-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by Sigma IT for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Inerva Technology, a France-based cyber risk assessment platform, was acquired by The 20 MSP for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• ParaFlare, an Australia-based managed detection and response (MDR) firm, was acquired by Deloitte Australia for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Quantum, a Singapore-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by Armor for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• RAD Computing, a United States-based managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by BrightWorks IT for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Rookout, a United States-based observability and security analytics platform, was acquired by Dynatrace for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• The Mako Group, a United States-based professional services group focused on penetration testing and security advisory services, was acquired by Centric Consulting for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• Waterfront Technical Services, a United States-based professional services firm focused on cybersecurity consulting, was acquired by Sentar for an undisclosed amount. (more)

• WeHackPurple, a Canada-based application security training and education community, was acquired by Semgrep (formerly r2c) for an undisclosed amount. (more)

📚 Great Reads

• AI Incident Database - The AI Incident Database is dedicated to indexing the collective history of harms or near harms realized in the real world by the deployment of artificial intelligence systems.

• Promptmap - By Utku Sen: A tool that automatically performs prompt injection attacks on ChatGPT instances by analyzing ChatGPT rules and generating creative attack prompts tailored to the target.

• *SBOM & the Software Supply Chain - EdgeBit’s take on federal regulation around supply chain security on the Cloudcast podcast. Background on why the government is stepping in and how their actions will likely change SOC2/ISO standards in the future.

• MITRE ATLAS - A knowledge base of adversary tactics, techniques, and case studies for machine learning (ML) systems based on real-world observations, demonstrations from ML red teams and security groups, and the state of the possible from academic research.

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🧪 Labs

The attacker is logging in from inside the building 😱