BlackHat Startup Spotlight 2024 Finalists: An Inside Look
A look at this year's 2024 BlackHat Startup Spotlight Finalists
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Good morning y’all! 🤠
By now, most of you reading this are either in Vegas or all packed up and ready to be landing in Vegas soon. If not, you’re one of the lucky ones who don’t have to bare hellish temps and the madness that is Hacker Summer Camp. That said, if you’re around and want to sync up, PM me on Substack or LinkedIn and we can square something away!
Now let’s get to why we’re gathered here today: the BlackHat Startup Spotlight (BSS) competition which will be wrapping up tomorrow at the Innovators & Investors summit. The competition is fairly new, running for 3 years as opposed to the RSA Innovation Sandbox which has been running since 2005. There are many differences between both competitions, but both have become a prestigious rite of passage for hot security startups.
To qualify for the competition, startups must be less than 5 years old with under 50 employees. They must submit a 5-minute video demo’ing their product and how they envision it changing the cybersecurity landscape. Products can be in development, pre-launch, or recently launched phases.
Each of the finalist receive:
One turnkey startup booth at Black Hat USA 2024.
One 20-minute speaking session in the Startup City Theater.
One 30-minute call with an Omdia cybersecurity analyst.
Past winners of the BSS include Phylum (2022) and Mobb (2023). This year’s finalists are RAD Security, Dryrun Security, Knostic, and LeakSignal. The founding teams for these startups is stacked with 2nd time founders like Gadi Evron and key folks (James Wickett, Jimmy Mesta) from the Signal Sciences crew. It’s shaping up to be a great showdown kicking off tomorrow at 4:45pm PT. I’ll be rooting for the home team! 😉
Anyhow, in this post, we’ll take a look at the composition of each startup, what problem they’re tackling and how.
2024 Finalists 🏆
RAD Security
Leadership: Brooke Motta, Co-Founder & CEO; Jimmy Mesta, Co-Founder & CTO
Problem Space: Cloud-Native Security
Solution: Cloud-native threat detection and response by creating behavioral fingerprints (vs. signature-based) of workloads, identities, and infrastructure. Integration with shift-left practices and runtime verification.
Founded in: 2021
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total raised: $6M USD seed
Website: rad.security
DryRun Security
Leadership: James Wickett, Co-Founder & CEO; Ken Johnson, Co-Founder & CTO
Problem Space: Application Security
Solution: An AI-powered security buddy for developers, integrated with GitHub. It provides real-time security context and analysis on every pull request. The tool focuses on contextual security analysis by leveraging GenAI and aggregating data from its 12 (and counting) code analyzers.
The key word here is ‘context’. By leaning on their different analyzers (i.e., Configured Codepaths, AuthN/AuthZ), they’re able to root out false positives and surface the most pressing findings to developers. The team is also continuously experimenting with the latest AI models and pushing the boundaries of token limits. It’ll be cool to see where Dryrun is a year from now.
Founded in: 2022
HQ: Austin, TX
Total raised: $2.5M USD seed
Website: Dryrun.security + GitHub Marketplace Listing
Knostic
Leadership: Sounil Yu, Co-Founder & CTO; Gadi Evron, Co-Founder & CEO
Problem Space: GenAI Security
Solution: Need-to-know based access control for LLMs to prevent oversharing of sensitive information. Their product analyzes existing permissions and roles to derive need-to-know levels across organizations, guiding employees and customers to the information they need while preventing access to unnecessary details.
One key area of focus for them seems to be Microsoft Copilots which are a privacy mess in and of themselves.
Founded in: 2023
HQ: Tel Aviv, IL
Total raised: $3.3M USD pre-seed
Website: Knostic.ai
LeakSignal
Leadership: Wesley Hales, Founder & CEO; Max Bruce, Founder & CTO
Problem Space: Data Protection
Solution: Real-time, in-transit data classification and protection against sensitive data leakage. The product integrates with existing infrastructure and uses policy-based enforcement to prevent sensitive data leaks and unwanted data flows.
Their solution is compatible with managed Kubernetes, serverless, and other cloud-native tech which instantly makes them a key contender in the data security domain.
While LeakSignal is the most low key of the listed startups, they did recently announce a partnership with Cyera, a DSPM unicorn, which indicates strong signal for their solution and team.
Founded in: 2022
HQ: Covina, CA
Total raised: Undisclosed
Website: leaksignal.com