Halcyon, a cybersecurity startup founded by veterans Jon Miller and Ryan Smith, recently raised an impressive $44 million in a Series A funding round. This additional cash and loan, led by venture capital firms SYN Ventures and Corner Ventures, gives the company the boost it needs to bolster its engineering and R&D departments as well as expand its sales and marketing outreach.
The aim of Halcyon is to help protect companies from ransomware, one of the top cybersecurity threats of 2021. This form of attack is especially damaging for companies, with experts predicting global damages to exceed $30 billion by 2023. However, the attempted solutions of many current security tools have failed, prompting Miller and Smith to launch a platform with the goal of stopping ransomware from causing damage and reducing overall recovery times.
In order to tackle this threat, Halcyon leverages AI-driven detection models to identify malicious intent from a large dataset of ransomware events. This helps to stop known bad executables while simultaneously sending suspicious executables to additional protection layers for further analysis. On top of that, its “resilience layer” captures the encryption keys created by the attack if Halcyon’s other layers fail, providing IT and security teams with an automated way to quickly decrypt their impacted devices.
Miller and Smith’s message is seemingly resonating with investors, leading to their series A funds. But they are far from the only ones attempting to tackle this threat. The cybersecurity sector is brimming with tech vendors who are similarly funded but with different approaches. It looks like the $50 million Halcyon has received since 2020 will help them stay ahead of the competition.
The company itself currently boasts a customer base of 51 companies, but plans to expand its team size from 75 people to 100 by the end of the year. The launch of a data exfiltration tool designed to stop double extortion techniques, and system support for Linux and Mac, are a few of the many products and services Halcyon plans to introduce.
Jon Miller, Halcyon’s CEO, has an impressive track record; having worked for companies subsequently acquired by Blackberry, Optiv, and cyber defense contractor Boldend. His main focus right now is to ensure the product he created is unique and offers value to customers.
Ransomware remains a danger to companies around the world, and investing in cybersecurity likely won’t be enough to solve the problem. Jon Miller and Ryan Smith managed to identify this issue early on and created Halcyon to help protect businesses from such a threat. With their recent funds raised, they are now well-equipped to take their mission even further.
