May brought a variety of exciting developments across our community, on the heels of RSA Conference. Snowflake announced its definitive agreement to acquire TruEra. Ernie shared perspective at TechCon SoCal 2024, Alberto sat down with Ann Johnson, Microsoft CVP and Deputy CISO for her Afternoon Cyber Tea podcast, and Shane revealed how companies can stay secure in the age of generative AI in TIPS #16. Meanwhile, we welcomed engineering leader Chris Sharp to our Advisory Council and fellow member Joe Levy was promoted to CEO of Sophos. As always, thank you for your support in backing builders of the digital future. Onward!

Financings and M&A

Snowflake, a leader in cloud data storage and analytics services, announced its definitive agreement to acquire TruEra, creator of AI quality solutions to evaluate and monitor LLM apps and ML models in production. Congratulations to TruEra co-founders Anupam Datta, Shayak Sen, and Will Uppington and the entire team!

Read the press release and coverage in VentureBeat. 

Team Updates

Alberto joined Ann Johnson, CVP and Deputy CISO at Microsoft on her Afternoon Cyber Tea podcast. He shared his journey from an engineer at Apple to an entrepreneur and investor, and discussed the evolution of cybersecurity, AI, the industry's current trends following RSAC 2024, and the importance of strategic public-private partnerships.

Ernie spoke on two panels at TechCon SoCal 2024, a gathering of innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders. He discussed the rapidly evolving investing landscape in the Growth Stage Investing: Blueprint from Series A to Series B and Beyond panel. He also joined Insights from Investing in Climate, Security, and Deep Tech to provide a cybersecurity perspective alongside investors in climate and deep tech. Thank you to TechCon SoCal for hosting this incredible event! 

Advisory Council Updates

Please join us in welcoming a new distinguished leader to the Forgepoint Advisory Council: 

Chris Sharp, CTO at Blockdaemon, former Engineering Leader at Apple. Chris is a veteran engineering leader with extensive technical expertise in payments, access, identity, and distributed ledger technologies. Prior to Blockdaemon, he spent 23 years at Apple where he and his teams developed Find My iPhone (FMiP), eSIM, and Apple Pay. Chris holds a Master's degree in Finance, Investments, and Securities from Golden Gate University and is a named inventor on over 50 US and global patents.

Congratulations to Advisory Council member Joe Levy on his appointment as CEO of Sophos: 

Joe Levy has been appointed CEO of Sophos. During his nine-year tenure, Joe has led Sophos from a product-only vendor into a global cybersecurity giant with an incident response team and managed security operations services that defend more than 21,000 organizations globally. As CEO, Joe plans to expand Sophos’ already strong customer base in the midmarket which includes nearly 600,000 customers worldwide. Congratulations: so well-deserved, Joe!

The Latest Insights

TIPS #16: How can companies stay secure in the age of generative AI-powered innovation? Shane writes about how existing security controls often aren't sufficient when companies rapidly integrate genAI, the risks and impacts this creates, and how to secure genAI models along with the applications, data, and permissions they leverage, featuring Bishop Fox, Nudge Security, SPHERE, and Symmetry Systems.  

Portfolio Company Updates

Lynx was recognized as Best of Breed in the 2024 Chartis Financial Crime and Compliance 50 Report for its Name and Transaction Screening solution. The report showcases the top 50 global companies combatting financial crime. Congratulations to Lynx for this prestigious achievement!

Symmetry Systems was recognized as a Strong Performer in the 2024 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Data Security Posture Management report. Well done and congratulations to the Symmetry team!

BREAKTHROUGHS

Constella Intelligence released its Advanced Know Your Employee (KYE) solution which offers unparalleled visibility into internal risks and threats, setting a new standard for safeguarding organizations.

Rafay announced new Platform-as-a-Service capabilities for GPU-based workloads and turnkey workflows for MLOps and LLMOps to empower customers to quickly leverage the power of AI.

PARTNERSHIPS

SolCyber partnered with Carahsoft to introduce a CMMC Readiness Program to expedite CMMC compliance for defense contractors. 

Uptycs announced a partnership with Kite to deliver advanced cloud security solutions to enterprises across the UK.

INSIGHTS

1Kosmos shared four ways to align authentication with business needs.

Bishop Fox VP of Consulting and Cosmos Tom Eston published his latest monthly column for SecurityWeek on industry-level confusion and contradictions that create their own category of vulnerability.

Cinchy released an executive primer on AI's unseen challenges and how collaborative intelligence maximizes AI’s impact on customer success. 

CyberCube launched the Global Threat Outlook H1 2024 report detailing potential cyber threats and the industries that are most likely to be affected by the shifting cyber risk landscape.

Huntress shared insights on the importance of quick incident response and how companies can gain the edge with Huntress' response capabilities.

Lumu shared a case study on revolutionizing a nonprofit organization's cybersecurity strategy after a serious ransomware attack.

NowSecure analyzed how the Singapore Safe App Standard builds mobile application security and trust.

ReversingLabs reviewed the NSA's zero-trust maturity for AppSec and asked experts where there's room for improvement. 

SPHERE shed insight on the significance of secure data transmission protocols and critical best practices. 

Surefire Cyber Director, DFIR Luke Emrich was featured on The SafeHouse Initiative podcast series Prepare, Respond, Fortify: Incident Response Fundamentals.

Synadia announced two additions to its executive team: Justyna Bak was appointed as the first Vice President of Marketing and Byron Ruth was promoted to Vice President of Engineering and Product.

Verituity CEO Ben Turner spoke with American Banker’s John Adams about building a resilient payments technology business in a choppy fintech market.

Upcoming Events

6/12-6/13 NowSecure is presenting two sessions at Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference in Denver. Founder and Board member Andrew Hoog presents on Wednesday and Product Marketing Manager Brendan Hann presents on Thursday. 

6/19 Bishop Fox Principal Technology Strategist Rob Ragan is hosting a webcast demystifying the complexities of security testing in LLMs and sparking a conversation about our daily interactions with GenAI. 

6/19 CyberCube CEO Pascal Millaire will be speaking alongside 40+ C-level leaders at Intelligent Insurer’s Re/insurance Outlook Europe Conference in Zurich. 

6/20 Huntress is hosting its latest Fireside Chat on Incident Response Planning. 

6/20 Lumu CTO Jeffrey Wheat and Field CISO Dr. Chase Cunningham are speaking in a Carahsoft webinar on how to defend K-12 networks from cybersecurity threats.

6/25-27 SolCyber will be attending AFCEA TechNet Cyber in Baltimore. 

ON DEMAND NowSecure Connect 2024: Super Mobile World is a wrap and recordings from the conference are now available to watch on demand. 

ON DEMAND RAD Security VP of Sales and Customer Success Jason Pitzen hopped in a Cybertruck to speak with Cybersecurity Go-To-Market Talk podcast host Andrew Monaghan about the world of sales and cybersecurity.

ON DEMAND ReversingLabs spoke with 2024 Verizon DBIR co-author Philippe Langlois about the intricacies of data breaches, software supply chain weaknesses, and how malicious actors are shifting their tactics and targets.

ON DEMAND SPHERE hosted the latest Identity Hygiene Live exploring how Local Accounts can cause security issues due to unmanageable access risks.

ON DEMAND Surefire Cyber Director, DFIR Matt Dowling spoke on the Ransomware Advisory Group Update panel at the NetDiligence Cyber Risk Summit.

ON DEMAND Symmetry Systems hosted their State of Data + AI Security 2024 webinar. 

PORTFOLIO JOBS

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