Swedish Ethical Hackers Raise More Funding
December 9, 2019
Have you ever heard the cyber security terms white hat and black hat? They are metaphors for types of hacking. The terms originate from old western movies, where the good cowboys wore white hats while the villains had black ones. In reference to hacking, the black hat hackers are bad actors and the white hat hackers are ethical. Ethical hackers had a big score in Sweden says Bisman Area News in the article, “Detectify Raises Additional €21M For Its Ethical Hacking Network.”
Detectify is a Swedish cybersecurity startup that developed a powerful Web site vulnerability scanner. Detectify has raised another €21 million in funding; Balderton Capital led the fundraising with investors Inventure, Insight Partners, and Paua Ventures. The startup plans to use the funding to hire more white hat hackers to accelerate the company’s growth.
Detectify was founded in 2013 by elite white hat hackers. The team’s scanner is a Web site security tool that is automated to scan Web sites and discover vulnerabilities so users can remain on top of the security. The scanner’s most unique feature is that it is powered and updated by an ethical hacker network a.k.a. crowdsourcing.
Detectify used its first funding round in a clever and innovative way:
“As we explained when the startup raised its €5 million Series A round, this sees top-ranked security researchers submit vulnerabilities that are then built into the Detectify scanner and used in customers’ security tests. The clever part is that researchers get paid every time their submitted module identifies a vulnerability on a customer’s website. In other words, incentives are kept aligned, giving Detectify a potential advantage and greater scale compared to similar website security automation tools.”
The company gained clients in the US, including Spotify, Trello, and King. Detectify plans to continue its expansion by relying on talent acquisitions and crowdsourcing.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2019, 2019
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