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Wiz Valuation, Facebook OSS Tools, Gretel.ai, & Yubico Biometric Keys – ESW #246

In the Enterprise Security News: Wiz raises $250 million at a staggering $6 billion valuation, Gretel.ai, another privacy engineering startup, raises $50 million, Forcepoint acquires Bitglass, Yubico releases a new line of biometric security keys, Facebook releases an open source tool for analyzing mobile app code, Venture capital needs to clear its, plate, or it can't have any pudding, Maritime security has a lot of security work to do, & don't forget to stick around for the weekly squirrel!

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Principal Researcher at The Defenders Initiative
  1. 1. FUNDING: Wiz Raises $250M Series C round at Staggering $6B Valuation
    It's almost like Wiz saw Orca's raise last week and said "hold my 50 year old scotch". While the amount is considerably less than Orca's bonkers Series C, Orca's valuation is ONLY $1.8bn - less than a third of Wiz's $6bn prize. Only time will tell if either company ever sees an exit that validates these huge valuations.
  2. 2. FUNDING: Gretel.ai, a platform for generating synthetic and privacy-preserving data, raises $50M – Techio
    This is our third privacy engineering Series B in two weeks! We're really interested to see how big this category is going to get. We can definitely see this as a solid niche for companies with large and varied data streams and repositories, but we suspect the majority of folks will just build their own scripts to do it or find a project on Github that mostly meets their needs.
  3. 3. FUNDING: Network observability startup Kentik lands $40M
    A $40m Series C led by Third Point Ventures. Total funding raised is $102m. Appears to be netflow-focused and can run in all the major clouds, containers, private networks, and on hosts. Seems like an agnostic product, in terms of use cases, focused on detecting statistical anomalies, which could be security-related or performance-related.
  4. 4. ACQUISITIONS: Forcepoint To Acquire Security Service Edge Leader Bitglass
    Along with Netskope, Bitglass was one of the few remaining CASBs that didn't get acquired. PE-owned Forcepoint didn't announce the deal size, but I'm willing to bet it was well shy of a reasonable return on the $150m in Funding BitGlass raised.
  5. 5. NEW COMPANIES: Chainguard – focused on making supply chains secure by default
    Not a lot of details on the "how", but it looks like Chainguard intends to address potential threats at each stage of the dev process.
  6. 6. PRODUCTS: Yubico Launches First YubiKeys With Biometric Authentication
    After talking up biometric keys for over a year, they're finally available to buy! Yubico isn't the first company to market with a biometric-enabled security key, but they're one of the biggest and most visible.
  7. 7. TOOLS: Open-sourcing Mariana Trench: Analyzing Android and Java app security in depth
    The latest in a series of code analysis tools that Facebook has made open source. They previously released Zoncoyan (Hack analyzer) and Pysa (Python analyzer). MT source code is available on Github and binary releases can be installed via PyPI.
  8. 8. TRENDS: Venture capital is going to need a record-breaking run of IPOs to clear its own decks – TechCrunch
    Unicorns are so common these days (186 in 2021 so far) that the term is no longer useful. The crux of this article is that, with current startup growth, opportunities for exits could become an issue. Some tech giants are slowing down on acquisitions due to antitrust concerns, and the IPO process is complex and time-consuming. Where do startups go if options for exits dry up, but VC funding doesn't?
  9. 9. TRENDS: Raising the colors: Signaling for cooperation on maritime cybersecurity
    TL;DR - Maritime security is way behind, quite vulnerable, and attackers are starting to take an interest. Cargo ship ransomware, anyone?
  10. 10. SQUIRREL: Steve Wozniak and Alex Fielding’s startup Privateer aims to be the Google Maps of space – TechCrunch
    Space junk! There are already millions of pieces of junk in low earth orbit, and no one knows where most of it is! (USSC only tracks items larger than 10 centimeters) Animation showing space junk grow over time: https://youtu.be/wPXCk85wMSQ Number of debris objects estimated by statistical models to be in orbit 36500 objects greater than 10 cm 1000000 objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm 330 million objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm Some weird stuff has been put in orbit: 1. tools 2. $100k tool bag 3. Gene Roddenberry's ashes 4. Urine (Astronauts have described watching urine being released into space as one of the most beautiful sights in orbit) 5. Camera 6. 1400 pound tank of ammonia Past ideas for removing space junk: 1. nets 2. harpoons 3. robots programmed to hunt down junk 4. Ground-based lasers (https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3835) 5. Salvage for building new things (https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-company-turn-orbital-junk-space-stations) 6. Magnets or tentacles (https://www.wired.com/story/its-finally-time-to-take-out-the-space-trash/)
Principal Security Evangelist at Eclypsium

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