Highland Capital Partners Cultivates Cybersecurity Innovation with Cybersecurity Factory 2018
June 13 2018 - 12:32PM
Business Wire
Founders will spend 10 weeks building their
startups with Highland Capital Partners and industry mentors
Highland Capital Partners, an early stage venture capital firm
that helps early stage disruptors become industry leaders, today
announced the beginning of its renowned summer accelerator for
security startups, the Cybersecurity Factory 2018. Startups will
receive a $35,000 investment and participate in the 10-week
mentoring program at Highland’s office near the Harvard and MIT
campuses.
Started in 2015 as a collaboration between Highland Capital
Partners and MIT PhD candidates Jean Yang and Frank Wang,
Cybersecurity Factory is an immersive startup accelerator that
gives each team access to direct mentorship opportunities,
leadership development training, potential customers, and a
community that can provide feedback on both the technical solution
and the consumer-facing product. The program includes mock board
meetings, focused business and technical guidance from investors
and direct mentorship from the nation’s top cybersecurity
experts.
“When we began Cybersecurity Factory, we wanted to provide
entrepreneurs with the guidance and connections they needed to fine
tune their offering and navigate the challenging startup
ecosystem,” said Frank Wang, Co-founder of Cybersecurity Factory.
“With alums such as Commonwealth Crypto and Stealthmine securing
more than $1.5 million in seed funding following their summer with
us, we know our program is providing entrepreneurs with the
business direction they need to bring solutions to market.”
This year’s Cybersecurity Factory participants tackle the most
pressing issues within cybersecurity and data privacy, areas that
consumers, businesses and government alike remain focused on. As
global regulations such as GDPR come to fruition and new cyber
threats emerge weekly, the cybersecurity world continues to look
for new ideas and approaches for securing the digital world.
Highland Capital Partners has a history of bringing the most
advanced, talented cybersecurity companies to market, including
Carbon Black, Imprivata and Malwarebytes.
The following innovative startups will participate in the
Cybersecurity Factory this year:
- Akita – Founder Jean Yang,
Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is building a
platform for collecting and sharing sensitive data in health and
other domains, based on her research on programmatically enforcing
data privacy policies on sensitive data.
- Bluefyre – This cloud-native
application security solution developed by Sabin Thomas and Tim
Buntel gives developers the power to build secure applications that
can detect and prevent threats at runtime, without the need for
security experts.
- Convertive – This security
metrics platform led by Dan Chapman and John Murray uses actual
dollar figures and data to evaluate the performance of your entire
security approach.
- Kee.sh – Founder Sam Scott
offers secret management-as-a-service to help developers build and
maintain secure infrastructure and applications.
“Enterprises understand what is at stake when it comes to data
privacy and cybersecurity, but most application developers aren’t
security experts and need assistance to bake security into their
product or services from the beginning,” said Tim Buntel,
co-founder of Bluefyre. “Our platform makes putting security first
easy for organizations who lack dedicated security teams. Tapping
into Highland’s knowledge and connections is the opportunity we
hoped for to take our business to the next step and address this
widespread industry challenge.”
Cybersecurity Factory startups will work from Highland’s office
in Cambridge during the program and meet weekly with Highland
Partners and mentors. This year’s mentoring team includes senior
executives from Qualys, Imprivata, SAP, Synack, Akamai, LogMeIn,
IBM, AT&T, ISACA, Netflix, Twitter, IDC, and Cisco Systems. In
addition to sponsorship from Highland, the program receives support
from Comerica, Latham & Watkins, Akamai, Imprivata, Rapid7, and
Cybereason.
About Highland Capital Partners
Highland Capital Partners is an early stage venture capital firm
with a track record that includes 45 IPOs and 115 M&As. With
offices in Cambridge and Palo Alto, Highland has raised over $3B in
committed capital and invested in more than 270 companies during
its 30 years. Its investments have resulted in category-defining
businesses across consumer and enterprise technology, including 2U,
Gigamon, Catalant, Harry's, Malwarebytes, nuTonomy, Rent the
Runway, SmartThings, ThredUP, Carbon Black, and Turbonomic.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180613005942/en/
CommCreative, for Highland Capital PartnersKiley Nichols,
781-363-2543kileyn@commcreative.com