Cybereason raises $200 million for its enterprise security platform
Cybereason, which uses machine learning to increase the number of endpoints a single analyst can manage across a network of distributed resources, has raised $200 million in new financing from SoftBank Group and its affiliates.
It’s a sign of the belief that SoftBank has in the technology, since the Japanese investment firm is basically doubling down on commitments it made to the Boston-based company four years ago.
The company first came to our attention five years ago when it raised a $25 million financing from investors, including CRV, Spark Capital and Lockheed Martin.
Cybereason’s technology processes and analyzes data in real time across an organization’s daily operations and relationships. It looks for anomalies in behavior across nodes on networks and uses those anomalies to flag suspicious activity.
The company also provides reporting tools to inform customers of the root cause, the timeline, the person involved in the breach or breaches, which tools they use and what information was being disseminated within and outside of the organization.
For co-founder Lior Div, Cybereason’s work is the continuation of the six years of training and service he spent working with the Israeli army’s 8200 Unit, the military incubator for half of the security startups pitching their wares today. After his time in the military, Div worked for the Israeli government as a private contractor reverse-engineering hacking operations.
Over the last two years, Cybereason has expanded the scope of its service to a network that spans 6 million endpoints tracked by 500 employees, with offices in Boston, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and London.
“Cybereason’s big data analytics approach to mitigating cyber risk has fueled explosive expansion at the leading edge of the EDR domain, disrupting the EPP market. We are leading the wave, becoming the world’s most reliable and effective endpoint prevention and detection solution because of our technology, our people and our partners,” said Div, in a statement. “We help all security teams prevent more attacks, sooner, in ways that enable understanding and taking decisive action faster.”
The company said it will use the new funding to accelerate its sales and marketing efforts across all geographies and push further ahead with research and development to make more of its security operations autonomous.
“Today, there is a shortage of more than three million level 1-3 analysts,” said Yonatan Striem-Amit, chief technology officer and co-founder, Cybereason, in a statement. “The new autonomous SOC enables SOC teams of the future to harness technology where manual work is being relied on today and it will elevate L1 analysts to spend time on higher value tasks and accelerate the advanced analysis L3 analysts do.”
Most recently the company was behind the discovery of Operation SoftCell, the largest nation-state cyber espionage attack on telecommunications companies.
That attack, which was either conducted by Chinese-backed actors or made to look like it was conducted by Chinese-backed actors, according to Cybereason, targeted a select group of users in an effort to acquire cell phone records.
As we wrote at the time:
… hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world to date over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts of call records — including times and dates of calls, and their cell-based locations — on at least 20 individuals.
Researchers at Boston-based Cybereason, who discovered the operation and shared their findings with TechCrunch, said the hackers could track the physical location of any customer of the hacked telcos — including spies and politicians — using the call records.
Lior Div, Cybereason’s co-founder and chief executive, told TechCrunch it’s “massive-scale” espionage.
Call detail records — or CDRs — are the crown jewels of any intelligence agency’s collection efforts. These call records are highly detailed metadata logs generated by a phone provider to connect calls and messages from one person to another. Although they don’t include the recordings of calls or the contents of messages, they can offer detailed insight into a person’s life. The National Security Agency has for years controversially collected the call records of Americans from cell providers like AT&T and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch), despite the questionable legality.
It’s not the first time that Cybereason has uncovered major security threats.
Back when it had just raised capital from CRV and Spark, Cybereason’s chief executive was touting its work with a defense contractor who’d been hacked. Again, the suspected culprit was the Chinese government.
As we reported, during one of the early product demos for a private defense contractor, Cybereason identified a full-blown attack by the Chinese — 10,000 thousand usernames and passwords were leaked, and the attackers had access to nearly half of the organization on a daily basis.
The security breach was too sensitive to be shared with the press, but Div says that the FBI was involved and that the company had no indication that they were being hacked until Cybereason detected it.
Powered by WPeMatico
The Inside adds sofas to its custom furniture lineup
While The Inside already offers a range of made-to-order furniture like beds, headboards, chairs and ottomans, it’s aiming for the center of your living room today with the launch of its first sofa collection.
Founded by CEO Christiane Lemieux (who previously founded Dwell Studio and sold it to Wayfair) and COO Britt Bunn (who previously worked at One Kings Lane), The Inside uses technologies like digital printing and 3D modeling to rethink the furniture-buying experience — customers can choose from a variety of furniture models and fabrics, then the company will make the furniture from scratch and deliver it within weeks.
When I met with The Inside’s executive team a few weeks ago, Lemieux repeated the company’s motto of taking customers “beyond the beige,” helping them create a home that isn’t just filled with the same boring furniture as everyone else.
“We want you to love your life,” she said. “When you walk into your house, that should be the ultimate destination.”
Bunn, meanwhile, suggested that the sofa launch represents a culmination of the work the company has been doing to build out its supply chain and develop its technology.
“That’s really the centerpiece of the home, one of the first things you buy when you move into a new apartment,” she said. “We want to take all of the value props we’ve been honing for accent furniture and bring that to the sofa category. Yes, people care about price and speed, but we also want someone to feel excited and inspired to pick from one of our hundred-plus fabrics.”
The collection includes prints created in partnership with Scalamandré, SF Girl by Bay, Refinery29’s Christene Barberich, Homepolish’s Katherine Carter and fashion designers Peter Som and Clare V. The Inside says those designs can be paired with six different frames, ranging from modern sofas (where prices start at $1,600) to slipcover sectionals (prices start at $3,000), all deliverable within four weeks.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google is shutting down its Trips app
Google is shutting down its Trips app for mobile phones, but is incorporating much of the functionality from the service into its Maps app and Search features, according to a statement from the company.
Support for the Trips app ends today, but information like notes and saved places will be available in Search as long as a user signs into their Google account.
To find attractions, events and popular places in a geography, users can search for “my trips” or go to the new-and-improved Travel page in Google.
Google announced changes to their Travel site in September 2018, which included many of the features that had been broken out into the Trips app. So now the focus will be on driving users back to Travel and to include more of the functionality in Google’s dominant mapping and navigation app.
Soon users will be able to add and edit notes from Google Trips in the Travel section on a browser and find saved attractions, flights and hotels for upcoming and past trips.
In Maps, searching a destination or finding specific iconic places, guide lists, events or restaurants can be done by swiping up on the “Explore” tab in the app.
Tapping the menu icon will now take users to places they’ve saved under the “Your Places” section. And soon the maps app will also include upcoming reservations organized by trip and those reservations will be available offline so a user won’t need to download them.
Powered by WPeMatico
Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt is coming to TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise to discuss customer experience management
There are few topics as hot right now in the enterprise as customer experience management, that ability to collect detailed data about your customers, then deliver customized experiences based on what you have learned about them. To help understand the challenges companies face building this kind of experience, we are bringing Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt to TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise on September 5 in San Francisco (p.s. early-bird sales end this Friday, August 9).
At the root of customer experience management is data — tons and tons of data. It may come from the customer journey through a website or app, basic information you know about the customer or the customer’s transaction history. It’s hundreds of signals and collecting that data in order to build the experience where Reinhardt’s company comes in.
Segment wants to provide the infrastructure to collect and understand all of that data. Once you have that in place, you can build data models and then develop applications that make use of the data to drive a better experience.
Reinhardt, and a panel that includes Qualtrics’ Julie Larson-Green and Adobe’s Amit Ahuja, will discuss with TechCrunch editors the difficulties companies face collecting all of that data to build a picture of the customer, then using it to deliver more meaningful experiences for them. See the full agenda here.
Segment was born in the proverbial dorm room at MIT when Reinhardt and his co-founders were students there. They have raised more than $280 million since inception. Customers include Atlassian, Bonobos, Instacart, Levis and Intuit .
Early-bird tickets to see Peter and our lineup of enterprise influencers at TC Sessions: Enterprise are on sale for just $249 when you book here; but hurry, prices go up by $100 after this Friday!
Are you an early-stage startup in the enterprise-tech space? Book a demo table for $2,000 and get in front of TechCrunch editors and future customers/investors. Each demo table comes with four tickets to enjoy the show.
Powered by WPeMatico
India’s Indifi raises $20.4M to expand its online lending platform
Indifi, a Gurgaon-based startup that offers loans to small and medium-sized businesses and also operates an online lending marketplace, has raised 1,450 million Indian rupees ($20.4 million) in a new financing round to expand its business in the country.
The Series C round for the four-year-old startup was led by CDC Group, a U.K.-government-owned VC fund. Existing investors Accel, Elevar Equity, Omidyar Networks and Flourish Ventures also participated in the round, the startup announced on Tuesday (Indian Standard Time).
Indifi, which has raised about $34 million in venture capital to date, has also relied on debt to grow and finance loans on its platform. Currently, it’s in about $21 million in debt, Alok Mittal, co-founder and managing director of Indifi, told TechCrunch in an interview.
Indifi, which itself finances some loans, additionally also serves as a marketplace for banks and non-banking financial companies to participate in funding loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, said Mittal. Both the businesses are equally growing and contributing to its bottom line, he said.
A typical loan processed by Indifi is of about $7,000 in size. Overall, the startup offers between $1,400 to $70,000 in capital to businesses.
Unlike banks and many other online lenders, Indifi works with an ecosystem of companies to assess risk factors before granting a loan to a business, Mittal said. For instance, Indifi works with food-delivery startups Zomato and Swiggy and checks a restaurant’s history and feedback from their customers before issuing to a restaurant.
Similarly, if an enterprise from the travel industry were to look for a loan, Indifi checks the volatility of the market. Some of its other business partners include Oyo Rooms, MakeMyTrip, Flipkart, FirstData, Travel Booking and Riya Travel.
“We chose to invest in Indifi because of its advanced data-driven approach that enables it to reach [thousands] of underserved customers across India. By reducing the high cost of risk assessment and customer acquisition, Indifi helps formal and informal businesses to access growth finance that otherwise may not receive it,” Srini Nagarajan, managing director and head of CDC Group’s Asia business, said in a statement.
Despite its longer background check process, Mittal said Indifi has been able to finance nearly 50% of all the applications it gets, compared to about 10% deals that materialize with banks and other lenders.
Indifi, which spent the first year and a half of its existence building relationships with major companies and refining its products, has amassed more than 15,000 customers to date, Mittal said. Its client base has grown by 2.5 times in the past year, he said.
The startup will use the fresh capital to find new clients and lending partners to expand its marketplace business, Mittal said. It will also explore lending to businesses in more sectors, including logistics (so fleet-owners could also get loan).
Indifi competes with a handful of businesses, including Bangalore-based Zest Money, Five Star Finance, Capital Float and, in some capacity, Drip Capital, which recently raised $25 million.
Powered by WPeMatico
Not your typical startup: How being a cooperative drives our business and product development
Our French startup Digicoop is a remote-first worker cooperative. We started the company in 2015, based on our shared values and passion for technology. The goal was simple: make good products that will have a positive impact on companies. The road to funding, not so simple.
Due to our unique business model, which focuses on building a sustainable company, we had to forego venture capital and convince lots of players to take a chance. The effort paid off. Here’s a look at why we chose to be a co-op, how we got the funding and how it drives our product development.
Table of Contents
- Raison d’être
- SCOP: We’re all in this together
- Co-ops on the rise
- A new approach to management
- Sustainable growth
- Co-op funding, a tricky business
- Exit strategy? Not here
- Hitting roadblocks
- Round 1: Community help
- Round 2: Crowdfunding
- Vision of the future
- Last but not least: our products
Raison d’être
Unlike many startups, Digicoop wasn’t founded because of a particular product. Our story is a bit different. In 2015, a few friends and former colleagues came together to work on projects they were passionate about. Initially we didn’t know what those would be, but we quickly figured out the theme: collaborative work tools for teams.
Making that our focus was no coincidence. We recognized that the workplace was changing: distributed teams were becoming more common, and with that more transparency and an increased cross-team collaboration necessary. We became frustrated with traditional work tools and processes, as they were no longer enough.
We saw an opportunity to develop products suitable for the digital future, but that wasn’t our only driver. Being passionate about technology and the impact it can have on the society, we set out to build tools that could make a positive difference. The idea was to empower employees, not only managers.
Our shared values and vision of the workplace were the reason we decided to go against the grain and structure Digicoop as a worker cooperative (called SCOP in France), giving each employee a real stake in the company.
SCOP: We’re all in this together
Powered by WPeMatico
This startup wants to democratize custom sneaker ownership
There’s nothing like having a pair of fresh, unique sneakers. Limited-release culture facilitates some of that, but The Custom Movement hopes to make originality and self-expression via sneakers more accessible to the masses.
The Custom Movement, a custom sneaker startup backed by Y Combinator, enables independent artists to sell their one-of-a-kind sneaker designs to those who want highly unique Nikes, Vans, Timberlands or any other brand of shoe. Customers can shop by shoe brand, style, artist or price.
You can think of it a bit like an Etsy for custom sneakers. Right now, there are about 40 artists featured on the site that offer more than 5,000 different shoes. The platform is entirely open, meaning any artist can sign up to sell their shoes.
That means the prices can vary, but the cheapest shoe you can buy right now costs $110 and the most expensive one costs upwards of $1,000. The Custom Movement processes the payments, but artists handle the shipping.
In exchange for the platform, The Custom Movement takes a 10% commission on the sales price of the shoe. Down the road, the startup wants to help artists more easily manage their inventory and shipping processes. And, in the event something goes wrong with the order, The Custom Movement fully protects buyers.
Growing up in the Philippines, The Custom Movement co-founder Akshar Bonu’s experience of sneaker culture was different from people who grew up in the United States, he told TechCrunch.
“I went to a high school where we had to wear uniforms, so the only real article of clothing we had control over was our shoes,” Bonu said. “It’s my form of self-expression that I had growing up. What was interesting in the Philippines and high school, there wasn’t this monoculture around what people should wear. I’ve always been interested in unique shoes that help me express myself.”
Design by Nate Rivera, one of the artists of The Custom Movement
When Bonu came to the U.S. for college, he was introduced to limited-release culture and “shoes defined by what everyone else wanted,” he said. “That was a huge contrast to my experience with sneakers back in the Philippines. I found the sneaker culture and limited-release culture a bit problematic.”
That’s because, he said, it’s really hard to get the shoes, and then if you get them, there’s some incentive to resell them at a price that is hundreds of dollars higher than what you paid. There are even sites like StockX and GOAT that are entirely dedicated to reselling sneakers.
“The full experience led me to feel like there has to be a place where we can get super-original, creative shoes without breaking the bank,” he said. “I ended up finding them across Instagram with independent artists buying Air Force ones and customizing it. They were drawing on them or changing fabrics. It was amazing. This is where I found this new pool of creativity. Some of the artists resonated with me in a way that a big brand like Nike never could.”
That’s where the idea for The Custom Movement originated. Since joining Y Combinator, the startup has shifted from enabling people to describe what they were looking for to instead having artists put up the designs they were willing to make. All of the shoes are made to order, which enables more artists who don’t have the means to stockpile shoes upfront in order to participate.
“Our youngest artist is 15 years old,” Bonu said. “One thing that keeps us going is we get to enable this generation of sneakerheads who have previously just been spectating in the culture to now participate in it, as opposed to having it all come top-down from Nike. Everything we think about is how do we make it easier for more people to design sneakers and help them grow.”
Prior to Y Combinator, The Custom Movement raised a small amount of funding from Pear Ventures, which has backed startups like DoorDash, Gusto and Branch Metrics. In the near term, The Custom Movement is hoping to help its customers more easily find the designs that resonate with them.
Powered by WPeMatico
Four days left for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019
We’re just one month away from TC Sessions: Enterprise, which takes place on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. But you have only four days left to score an early-bird ticket and save yourself $100. Right now, you pay $249, but once the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) on August 9, the bird flies south and the price flies north. Get your early-bird ticket today and save.
Focused on the current and future state of enterprise software, this day-long conference offers tremendous value — even at full price. Considering the rate at which this $500 billion industry acquires startups — and how quickly it’s evolving — TC Sessions: Enterprise makes perfect sense for enterprise-minded founders, investors, CTOs, CIOs, engineers and MBA students (student tickets cost $75).
We’ve packed the conference with interviews, panel discussions, Q&As and breakout sessions. TechCrunch editors will dig deep to separate hype from reality as they explore crucial issues, complex technologies and investment trends with both industry giants and up-and-coming startups.
Here’s a sample of just some of what we have planned. You can also check out the agenda — and we might add a few surprises along the way.
Curious about the latest in enterprise investment? TechCrunch editor Connie Loizos will interview VCs Jason Green, founder and general partner at Emergence; Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan Partners; and Rebecca Lynn, co-founder and general partner at Canvas Ventures. They’ll examine trends in early-stage enterprise investments and discuss different sectors and companies that have their attention.
Maybe you want to learn from a founder who’s been there and done that. Don’t miss Aaron Levie, Box co-founder, chairman and CEO, as he outlines what it took to travel the entire startup journey. He’ll also offer his take on the future of data platforms.
Want to cover more ground at TC Sessions: Enterprise? Take advantage of our group discount and bring the whole team. Buy four or more tickets at once and save 20%. Don’t forget: For every ticket you buy to TC Sessions: Enterprise, we’ll register you for a free Expo Only pass to TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4.
TC Sessions: Enterprise takes place on September 5, but your chance to save $100 ends in just four short days. Don’t wait — buy an early-bird ticket today, and we’ll see you in September!
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Enterprise? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
Powered by WPeMatico
Patrick Brown, the chief executive of Impossible Foods, is coming to Disrupt
Impossible Foods is having quite the year.
In the past seven months, the company has signed a nationwide deal with Burger King, weathered a demand surge that saw supplies dwindle and stocks of its signature Impossible burger sell out across the country, and raised fears among players in the $98 billion meat market that they could lose their grip on the American diet.
In October, the principal architect of this impossibly bold assault on the meat market will take the stage at Disrupt SF to talk about it all.
Patrick Brown has been on a wild ride since launching Impossible Foods in 2011. The idea for the company came to Brown, already a famous geneticist, while on sabbatical from his position as a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine.
In his earlier research Brown had already helped define the mechanism by which HIV and other retroviruses incorporate their genes into the cells they infect. At Stanford, Brown and his colleagues developed a new technology that lets researchers monitor the activity of all the genes in a genome and analyze, identify and interpret gene expression.
It was that work with genetics that led Brown to identify Impossible Foods’ key innovation, the development of synthetic heme — a molecule that makes meat… well… meaty.
Driven by the desire to address the environmental impact of animal farming, Brown and Impossible Foods have ambitious plans to develop plant-based alternatives to fish, poultry and beef around the world.
Along the way, Impossible has riled the beef industry, faced down supply chain snafus and made an unlikely ally in Burger King — one of the largest purveyors of beef patties in the U.S.
On our stage in San Francisco, Brown will talk about it all. It’s sure to be a fascinating conversation that will leave our audience with a lot of meaty issues to chew on.
Disrupt SF runs October 2 – October 4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets are available here.
Powered by WPeMatico
AT&T is offering free Spotify to select Unlimited subscribers
AT&T is sweetening the deal on its Unlimited & More Premium plan this week, with the addition of free Spotify Premium. That amounts to a $10-a-month savings for those paying the $80 a month for the wireless service. The plan offers one of seven free partner services, including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, VRV, Pandora and now Spotify .
There’s fine print, because of course there is. The deal applies specifically to the Unlimited & More Premium plan, while other AT&T subscribers can get a six-month trial of Premium for free. After that time, things revert to the regular price.
Existing Spotify Premium subscribers, meanwhile, can keep their account but get the service for free by signing up on all of the proper places on AT&T’s site.
The deal mirrors a similar partnership between Verizon and Apple Music, the services’ largest competitors, respectively. AT&T is currently the U.S.’s largest carrier by a slight edge. Spotify, meanwhile, continues to have a sizable advantage in paid subscriber numbers at more than 100 million to Apple’s 60 million.
Powered by WPeMatico