16 Innovative Cybersecurity Technologies Of 2016
This year's SINET 16 Innovators were chosen from 82 applicants representing nine countries.
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The Security Innovation Network (SINET) has shared the results of its annual SINET 16 competition created to discover the most innovative cybersecurity companies.
Each year, the organization's steering committee evaluates products from early-stage security companies from around the world and awards those it finds most compelling. The committee consists of 100 cybersecurity professionals who come from large businesses, government, VC firms, and academia.
Entrants must have a cybersecurity product, not only a service, in order to apply for SINET 16. Companies must also be completely autonomous and have annual revenues of $15M or less. They cannot have been previously selected as a SINET 16 Innovator more than once.
Companies named SINET 16 Innovators are invited to present their value proposition in front of 300 to 400 investors, buyers, researchers, and solutions providers. They are also given a booth to show their solutions at the SINET showcase in Washington DC, and receive free coaching to improve their messaging.
SINET lists five key criteria used to judge these emerging companies:
Marketplace urgency for the product/solution
How innovative/unique the product is
How well the technology solves real, critical security problems
The advantages of the product over others
The company's ability to succeed based on the state of its product, leadership, and capital
This year's winners were chosen from a pool of 82 applicants representing nine countries and a variety of technologies built to address security threats and vulnerabilities.
Which companies made the final cut? Here, we take a closer look at the winners and technologies included in this year's SINET 16 Innovators lineup.
Network and cybersecurity provider
About: Tool authenticates identity and applies policy on the first packet of network sessions to protect servers and networks.
Founded: 2010
Leaders/Founders: CTO John Hayes and CEO Bob Graham founded BlackRidge. Hayes focuses on technological vision and strategic direction; Graham has a broader business background but also previously worked as a tech analyst.
App security company
Factor to watch: Integrates sensors into code so enterprise apps can check themselves for vulnerabilities and protect against attacks.
Founded: 2014
2016 funding: $16M in Series B, September 2016
Leaders/Founders: CTO Jeff Williams and chief scientist Arshan Dabirsiaghi co-founded Contrast Security. Williams served as global chairman of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Foundation for eight years; Dabirsiaghi was formerly director of research for Aspect Security.
Industrial security provider
Factor to watch: Its research and focus on securing the industrial Internet will make CyberX one to watch as IoT operations continue to evolve.
Founded: 2013
2016 funding: $9M in Series A, August 2016
Leaders/Founders: CTO Nir Giller and CEO Omer Schneider, both veterans of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Elite Cyber Security Unit.
Online fraud detection service
Factor to watch:: The only online fraud detection service using unsupervised big data analytics to target malicious campaigns.
Founded: 2013
Latest funding: $14.5M in Series A, October 2015
Leaders/Founders: Co-founders CTO Fang Yu and CEO Yinglian Xie met at Microsoft Research and spent more than seven years developing fraud solutions.
Cyber situational awareness provider
About: Monitors more than 100 million data sources in 27 languages across the Web to gather data on organizational risk.
Founded: 2011
2016 funding: $14M in Series B, February 2016
Leaders/Founders: CTO James Chappell and CEO Alastair Paterson co-founded Digital Shadows. Both formerly worked at Detica; Chappell as security architect and Paterson as the internal propositions manager.
Security analytics company
About: Uses behavioral analytics and machine intelligence to target enterprise threats on-premises or in the cloud.
Founded: 2002
Latest funding: $10M in venture, March 2015
Leaders/Founders: President and CEO Dale Quayle formerly served as CEO of Integrien and VP at HP. CTO Stephan Jou formerly worked at IBM as a technical architect for the Business Analytics Office of the CTO.
Web security provider
About: Its platform isolates Web content in the cloud without requiring businesses to deploy endpoint software, so no malware reaches user devices.
Founded: 2013
Latest funding: $25M in Series B, June 2015
Leaders/Founders: Co-founded by CEO Amir Ben-Afraim, chief product officer Poornima DeBolle, and chief architect Gautam Altekar. Ben-Afraim and DeBolle previously worked at Juniper Networks; Altekar previously worked at Safely Inc.
Software, hardware, and cybersecurity company
About: Passages aims to protect against Web-based attacks by isolating the browser in a hardened virtual machine.
Founded: 2010
Leaders/Founders: CEO Richard Helms worked in the CIA for nearly 30 years then founded and sold Abraxas Corp. He founded Ntrepid to solve product challenges and created product lines Passages, ION, Nfusion, Timestream, Tartan, Virtus, and Elusiv.
Security automation company
Factor to watch: Instead of replacing security tools, Phantom Cyber connects an organization's existing platforms. It serves as an "operating system" by simplifying and streamlining capabilities so processes are executed faster.
Founded: 2014
Latest funding: $6.5M in Series A, September 2015
Leaders/Founders: CTO Sourabh Satish and CEO Oliver Friedrichs co-founded Phantom. Satish has had 162 patents issued and has 51 pending. Friedrichs also founded Immunet, which was sold and is currently Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) business.
Data security company
Factor to watch: Developed a modular collection of cybersecurity tools that are currently ready for use but anticipated to remain strong in the future as quantum computing continues to become a threat.
Founded: 2009
2016 funding: $10.3M Series A, July 2016
Leaders/Founders: Chairman and CSO Martin Tomlinson, CTO CJ Tjhai, and CEO Andersen Cheng co-founded Post-Quantum. All have strong ties to academia and financial services industries. Tomlinson is Emeritus Professor at Plymouth University, where Tjhai lectured, and Cheng is a former leader at JP Morgan.
Elastic: data search and insight; Prelert: behavioral analytics platform for IT, security teams
Factor to watch: In September 2016, Elastic acquired Prelert, which developed a machine learning engine that can search data to find anomalies, advanced threats, and suspicious behavior.
Founded: Elastic in 2012; Prelert in 2009
2016 funding: Elastic secured $70M in Series C, June 2014
Leaders/Founders: Elastic was founded by CTO Shay Banon and CEO Steven Schuurman. Prelert was founded by CTO Stephen Dodson.
Cloud-based network security provider
Factor to watch: Aiming to shift network security to the cloud with a tool that serves as a "memory" for the network that captures packets and stores them for up to a year.
Founded: 2013
Latest funding: $25M in Series B, November 2015
Leaders/Founders: CEO Scott Chasin and CTO Gene Stevens co-founded ProtectWise. Chasin was previously CTO for McAfee, content and cloud security. Stevens also founded mobile tagging company TagLabs, where he was CTO.
Cyber risk management provider
About: As companies' attack surfaces continue to grow, RiskSense collects data from IT and security tools and contextualizes it to give a whole view of the cybersecurity posture.
Founded: 2015
2016 funding: : $7M in Series A, August 2016
Leaders/Founders: CEO Srinivas Mukkamala and Mark Fidel, who oversees corporate development, co-founded RiskSense. Mukkamala was formerly senior research scientist at New Mexico Tech. Fidel previously served as president and managing partner at Computational Analysis and Network Enterprise Solutions (CAaNES).
Network security company
Factor to watch: Its Hacker's Playbook provides a "hacker view" of an organization's security posture to predict attacks and validate security controls.
Founded: 2014
2016 funding: $15M in Series A, July 2016
Leaders/Founders: Co-founded by CTO Itzik Kotler and CEO Guy Bejerano. Kotler previously served as lead developer at Hackersh, and Bejerano was formerly CSO at LivePerson.
Threat intelligence provider
About: Correlates external sources and internal security and analytics tools to give a single view of contextual information.
Founded: 2013
2016 funding: $12M in Series B and $3M in debt financing, August 2016
Leaders/Founders: Co-founded by CTO Ryan Trost and chief architect Wayne Chiang, both of whom are former security operations analysts.
Data security, information rights management company
About: Enables IT teams to track and audit digital data across devices while carrying security and policy so they can keep track of who is allowed to access information.
Founded: 2014
2016 funding: $21M in Series B, February 2016
Leaders/Founders: CEO Ajay Arora and chief technology and product officer Prakash Linga co-founded Vera. Both are former employees of AppSense, where Arora was CTO and VP of product management and Linga was VP of engineering.
Data security, information rights management company
About: Enables IT teams to track and audit digital data across devices while carrying security and policy so they can keep track of who is allowed to access information.
Founded: 2014
2016 funding: $21M in Series B, February 2016
Leaders/Founders: CEO Ajay Arora and chief technology and product officer Prakash Linga co-founded Vera. Both are former employees of AppSense, where Arora was CTO and VP of product management and Linga was VP of engineering.
The Security Innovation Network (SINET) has shared the results of its annual SINET 16 competition created to discover the most innovative cybersecurity companies.
Each year, the organization's steering committee evaluates products from early-stage security companies from around the world and awards those it finds most compelling. The committee consists of 100 cybersecurity professionals who come from large businesses, government, VC firms, and academia.
Entrants must have a cybersecurity product, not only a service, in order to apply for SINET 16. Companies must also be completely autonomous and have annual revenues of $15M or less. They cannot have been previously selected as a SINET 16 Innovator more than once.
Companies named SINET 16 Innovators are invited to present their value proposition in front of 300 to 400 investors, buyers, researchers, and solutions providers. They are also given a booth to show their solutions at the SINET showcase in Washington DC, and receive free coaching to improve their messaging.
SINET lists five key criteria used to judge these emerging companies:
Marketplace urgency for the product/solution
How innovative/unique the product is
How well the technology solves real, critical security problems
The advantages of the product over others
The company's ability to succeed based on the state of its product, leadership, and capital
This year's winners were chosen from a pool of 82 applicants representing nine countries and a variety of technologies built to address security threats and vulnerabilities.
Which companies made the final cut? Here, we take a closer look at the winners and technologies included in this year's SINET 16 Innovators lineup.
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