Enterprise Weekly #397: The Security Dilemma, Cloud Spending Report, and More
This week, Uber’s former CSO (and current CSO at Cloudflare) was found guilty of hiding a 2016 hack from government regulators that compromised over 57 million Uber driver and riders’ personal information. Uber has been in the hot seat for their security a few times before, including a 2014 investigation and a hack just two weeks ago.
While navigating and reporting cybersecurity breaches is often a thorny issue, security leaders face a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario. Given incidents aren’t pragmatically 100% preventable, their dilemma becomes doing their job competently and ethically or become the scapegoat faced with criminal charges.
Moving forward, this undoubtedly will impact how security leaders do their job. The question is, will this mean: Less innovation? More stringent security protocols? Or aligned liability between security and executive teams?
At the same time, enterprise budgets continue to put security at the forefront. Battery Ventures' State of Cloud Software Spending report found that most enterprises don’t expect to shrink their overall technology budgets this year:
Security ranked as the #1 priority among CXOs and will see the biggest budget increases over the next 1-5 years (62% and 55% respectively) with AI/ML as a close second
54% CXOs expected their tech budgets to increase with <2% expected their budgets to shirk by 10%+
However, 45% of CXOs who are planning to reduce their budgets are planning to do so through vendor consolidation, which will inevitably impact startups who are seen as a nice-to-have vs. must-have solution
Lastly, congratulations to our portfolio company Alkymi on their $21M Series A led by Intel Capital. Alkymi’s ‘Data Action Layer’ turns unstructured data into actions, making it possible for even non-technical users to automate their own data workflows for documents, email, and file data.
📚 Read more news:
Fortune: 15 Most Powerful Women in Startups
GeekWire: Amazon Makes First Investments in Outside VC Firms, Puts $150M to Underrepresented Founders
TechCrunch: Startups & VCs Are Embracing the Federal Government
TechCrunch: The US VC Slowdown Doesn’t Look That Bad
WSJ: Box CEO: Fortune 500s Are Holding Their Own Against Digital Upstarts
The Verge: Splunk Alleges Source Code Theft by Former Employee
*And Her Rebuttal
📚 More to follow:
Company: FireHydrant
Role: Manager of Business Development
Technology: Site Reliability & Incident Management Platform
Funding: $32.5M from Work-Bench, Menlo Ventures, Harmony Partners, Salesforce Ventures
⭐ Company of the Week ⭐
Coherence raises $3.9M led by First Round Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • New York, NY
Founders: Zachary Zaro (CEO), Zan Faruqui (President)
Easop raises $2.5M led by Partech and Boldstart Ventures
HR Tech • Seed • Paris, France
Zenskar raises $3.5M led by Bessemer Venture Partners
Future of Work • Seed • New York, NY
Coherence raises $3.9M led by First Round Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • New York, NY
Tidal Cyber raises $4M led by Ultratech Capital Partners
Risk / Security • Seed • Clifton, VA
Onyxia raises $5M led by World Trade Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • New York, NY
Comprehensive raises $6M led by Inspired Capital
HR Tech • Seed • San Francisco, CA
LayerX raises $7.5M led by Glilot Capital Partners
Risk / Security • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Lightdash raises $8.4M led by Accel
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
QorusDocs raises $10M led by WestRiver Group
Sales / Marketing • Series A • Bellevue, WA
Oort raises $11.5M led by .406 Ventures and Energy Impact Partners
Risk / Security • Series A • Boston, MA
Humaans raises $15M led by Lachy Groom
HR Tech • Series A • London, UK
Xembly raises $15M led by Norwest Venture Partners
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • Seattle, WA
Revelio raises $15M led by Elephant Partners
HR Tech • Series A • New York, NY
Immerok raises $17M led by CUSP Capital, 468 Capital and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Berlin, Germany
Alkymi raises $21M led by Intel Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • New York, NY
Eclypsium raises $25M led by Ten Eleven Ventures
Risk / Security • Series B • Portland, OR
Clearspeed raises $27M led by Sandia and PilotRock
Risk / Security • Series C • San Diego, CA
WorkSpan raises $30M led by Insight Partners
Sales / Marketing • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Tines raises $55M led by Felicis
Risk / Security • Series B • Dublin, Ireland
Securiti raises $75M led by Owl Rock Capital
Risk / Security • Series C • Coyote, CA
Altana raises $100M led by Activate Capital
Future of Work • Series B • New York, NY
NetSPI raises $410M led by KKR
Risk / Security • Private Equity • Minneapolis, MN
ServiceNow acquires Era Software for an Undisclosed Amount
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Acquisition • Seattle, WA