Cybersecurity Startup CYR3CON Raises $1.5 Million to Predict and Prevent Cyber Attacks
Dreamit SecureTech startup CYR3CON, which helps companies predict and prevent cyber attacks using artificial intelligence, announced a $1.5 million seed round led by Scout Ventures, with participation from Michael Sutton (former CISO, Zscaler), Aleksandr Yampolskiy (CEO, SecurityScorecard), Steven Witt (former CEO, Onyara and Partner/Co-Founder of DataTribe), and Steve Hassell, (former CIO, Emerson).
In conjunction with the funding, Scout Ventures partner Wes Blackwell will also be joining Cyr3con’s board.
“At Scout we look for seed stage startups that use AI in creative ways. CYR3CON exemplifies this,” stated Scout Ventures partner Wes Blackwell, “their unique combination of AI with automatically extracted hacker conversations is shifting clients from a reactive to a proactive security posture.” Blackwell will also be joining CYR3CON’s board.
Earlier this year, Cyr3con joined the fall cohort of Dreamit Venture’s SecureTech accelerator – which is actively introducing the company into a variety of F500 companies and follow-on investors. “CYR3CON is really in the cutting edge of the SOC,” stated Bob Stasio, Managing Director of Dreamit SecureTech. “Our customer network was really excited about the predictive aspect of their intelligence.”
Paulo Shakarian, Founder of CYR3CON | @PauloShakASU
Led by Paulo Shakarian, CEO, Cyr3con leverages a patented hybrid of Artificial Intelligence and Darkweb Mining to predict and prevent future cyberattacks before they occur. The solution automatically scouts the hacker communities and uses machine learning to help prioritize vulnerabilities that hackers most intend to use in an attack.
Originally funded by grant funding from the U.S. government, CYR3CON has gained recent traction with multiple Fortune 500 enterprises as well as cybersecurity service providers (such as MSSP’s). The initial traction led the company to seek additional capital to continue the momentum.
“After gaining insights from a variety of CSO’s and end-users, we felt that we could bring the platform to a wider market.” said Co-Founder and former DARPA Fellow Paulo Shakarian, the firm’s CEO.