Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

CHAPTER 14
Microsoft Ventures and HP Enterprise 
invest in group started by ex-NSA workers
Synack, a start-up that offers hackers for hire to 
companies from finance to healthcare as well as 
the US government, has raised $21m from Microsoft 
Ventures, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and telecoms 
group Singtel.
The new investors join GV, formerly known 
as Google Ventures, and Silicon Valley venture 
capitalists Kleiner Perkins in backing the start-
up, founded by two former employees of the US 
National Security Agency. The company has raised 
$55m in total.
Jay Kaplan, Synack co-founder and chief execu-
tive, said the company had experienced ‘explo-
sive growth’ in the past 18 months as customers 
signed up to rent their ‘red team’, expert security 
researchers who hack into networks to highlight 
vulnerabilities.
Synack selects the top 10 per cent of security 
researchers who apply to be part of their platform. 
Companies then pay the researchers to find flaws 
before hackers do.
The start-up hopes to help solve the problem of a 
shortage of cyber security professionals, which the 
Global Information Security Workforce Study esti-
mates will rise to 1.8m vacancies by 2020. Customers 
can access experts who they may not have been able 
to pay full time or who may be based in other parts 
of the world.
Mr Kaplan said it was particularly exciting that 
government agencies including the US Department 
of Defense and the IRS have signed up, given they are 
traditionally conservative and usually only employ 
US nationals.
Hacker-for-hire company Synack raises $21m
By Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco
Source
: DragonImages/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

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