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We take a look at some of Ireland’s most promising cybersecurity start-ups that are keeping businesses safe both here and abroad.
As emerging technologies such as generative AI, robotics and 5G get more sophisticated by the day, enterprises need to arm themselves to fight and prevent a barrage of cyberattacks and breaches that are likely to be borne out of exploiting these technological advances.
Jess Wyer, a cyber risk analyst at Deloitte, recently told SiliconRepublic.com that cybersecurity is always evolving and that it important to stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies.
Here are a few cybersecurity start-ups in Ireland that are rising to the occasion and helping businesses keep breaches at bay.
Cytidel
Founded only last year, this cybersecurity start-up has built a risk management platform that offers real-time vulnerability intelligence to help companies prioritise fixing the most important flaws in their systems. Cytidel software aims to arm enterprises with the ability to predict which flaws are most likely to lead to security breaches by adopting a risk-based approach to vulnerability management.
Based in Mayo, the company was founded by cybersecurity experts Matt Conlon and Conor Flannery to meet the growing demand for security services from a range of industries, including IT, financial services, health and infrastructure.
Evervault
On a mission to make encryption effortless for developers, Evervault was founded by former BT Young Scientist winner Shane Curran. The company describes itself as a platform that allows businesses to encrypt, process and share sensitive customer data “without touching it in plaintext”.
Evervault makes privacy tools for secure cloud hardware across both web and mobile applications, with the aim of taking privacy away from compliance and making it a product feature. After securing $3.2m seed funding in 2019, the Dublin-based start-up went on to raise $16m in Series A funding the following year.
Getvisibility
Founded in 2018 by Ronan Murphy and Mark Brosnan, Getvisibility is another cybersecurity start-up that has developed an AI-powered platform to manage and protect clients’ data. Using AI models trained on industry-specific knowledge, the Cork-headquartered company aims to provide fast and accurate data discovery and classification.
It raised €10m in Series A funding last March to accelerate its growth in key markets. This financing came less than a year after it raised more than €2m in a round led by former Eir chief executive Herb Hribar. The start-up also has an office in San Francisco, which it opened in October last year.
GuardYoo
Another Cork-based start-up in this list, GuardYoo was founded by Oleh Derevianko and Roman Sologub to be a game changer in cybersecurity. This SaaS tool is a platform for compromise assessment, which can help businesses find out when and how they’ve been compromised in order to prevent future breaches.
Founded in 2018, GuardYoo is a high-potential start-up led by CEO Darren Sexton, who is an experienced business professional having previously held executive positions at PFH, Trend Micro, Sage and McAfee.
Nova Leah
Nova Leah is a cybersecurity start-up aimed at a niche audience: medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers. A spin-out from Dundalk Institute of Technology, the company has developed SelectEvidence, a system designed to continuously assess connected medical devices for cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
It was founded by Dr Anita Finnegan, an expert in cybersecurity risk management who spoke to SiliconRepublic.com in 2020 after the company received two rounds of Government funding and multiple awards.
Siren
Headquartered in Galway, Siren recently received a €12m investment from the European Investment Bank to develop its ‘investigative intelligence’ platform and bring it to a wider audience.
The company aims to help law enforcement agencies and related organisations around the world to make complex searches, organise results visually and create advanced reports to share findings with their teams. It recently opened a new global R&D centre in Galway and has previously integrated its tech into an analytics firm that provides intelligence to the US government.
Smarttech247
A third Cork-based cybersecurity start-up on this list, Smarttech247 recently listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM sub-market at a valuation of £36.8m.
Founded by Ronan Murphy in 2008 and now led by CEO Raluca Saceanu, Smarttech247 combines threat intelligence with managed detection and response to provide insights, threat detection, investigation and response services to its customers. The company has been expanding its operations over the past couple of years. In February 2021, it announced plans to hire 30 new staff at its Cork headquarters.
Stryve
Stryve is a cybersecurity and private cloud and cybersecurity services provider based in Carlow. Some of its major clients include Zevas, Dole PLC, Trustvet, First Ireland, Origina and Typetec.
Founded in 2018, the start-up led by CEO Andrew Tobin recently acquired a majority stake in SureDatum and its fintech platform. It also opened a tech hub in Morocco in 2021 and expanded in the UK the following year.
Tines
Named by Sifted last year as one of the next 10 technology companies to achieve unicorn status in Europe, Tines is an Irish cybersecurity start-up that has developed a no-code platform to automate manual security workloads.
Based in Dublin, the ‘soonicorn’ was founded in 2018 by Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella, who previously worked in security roles at eBay and DocuSign. Tines raised $26m in fresh funds in 2021, aiming to invest in products that go beyond security automation, double its workforce and open an office in Boston. In October, it upped its valuation by extending its Series B funding with an additional $55m raised.
Vaultree
Our Start-up of the Week this week, Vaultree was founded on a dairy farm in 2020 by Ryan Lasmaili, Tilo Weigandt, Shaun McBrearty and Maxim Dressler. The cybersecurity start-up, which appointed former Twitter CISO Rinki Sethi to its board of directors recently, is developing a software development kit that enables organisations of any type to benefit from fully functional data-in-use encryption.
The start-up raised seed funding of $3.3m in November 2021, followed by the close of a $12.8m Series A funding round in December 2022. Soon after, it announced the creation of 50 jobs globally.
Viso
Based in Dublin, Viso offers virtual cybersecurity officer services for SMEs that can’t create their own full-time security team. It was founded in 2021 and recently announced an expansion of its operations to the UK, with plans to expand to new markets and grow existing relationships with clients in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the US.
The company also offers SMEs specific services such as cyberthreat analysis, internal audits for ISO 27001 certification, policy development and technology assessment.
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