Gutsy's $51M Seed Round

Friday Report - October 13, 2023

Welcome reader to your CybersecurityHQ report.

Headlines

Israel police recently announced they froze crypto-currency accounts they claim were used to raise funds for Hamas. Accounts thought to be linked to Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hezbollah have been found to use a range of exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin, BTCTurk, Bybit, Garantex, and Sunswap.

Binance worked with the Israeli government to begin freezing accounts on October 10. As Elliptic reports, the high transparency and traceability of assets on blockchains facilitates seizing crypto assets. This is only the latest operation of its kind. For instance, in July, the National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing of Israel tracked down and seized 67 accounts at virtual asset exchanges accounting for $94 million worth of crypto linked to the PIJ.

Startup Gutsy emerged from stealth on Tuesday with one of cybersecurity's largest-ever seed rounds at $51 million. Founded by the same team that created Twistlock in 2015, including CEO Ben Bernstein, Gutsy comes along at a time when CISOs are under increasing pressure to quantify their investments' value while streamlining spending and enhancing visibility.

Gutsy's value proposition combines process mining with cybersecurity. Process mining is projected to reach $8.4 billion in market value by 2032. The activity helps identify and resolve bottlenecks and roadblocks in complex processes — including compliance and cybersecurity. Gutsy offers modules covering identity management, incident response, and vulnerability management processes.

A recent Microsoft blog post reveals that, in June 2023, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint successfully thwarted a significant remote encryption attempt by the Akira ransomware group against an undisclosed industrial organization. This attacker, tracked as Storm-1567, utilized devices not integrated into Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. They also used lateral movement activities and reconnaissance before compromising a user account.

Microsoft’s automatic attack disruption feature prevented breached accounts from accessing network endpoints and resources. This effectively limits any attackers' lateral movement capabilities. Microsoft claims this same feature also played a key role in preventing the breach of a medical research lab in August. The work reiterates the importance of identifying and containing compromised user accounts, particularly highly privileged ones.

Interesting Read

Flatiron School is marking Cybersecurity Awareness Month by hosting a series of free webinars. These webinars are open to all and offer a chance to talk directly with instructors. This year, their emphasis is on developing effective defenses against the ever-evolving threat of generative AI — a leading cause in the surge of cyber attacks in 2023.

Interested in attending one of the webinars? Here’s the schedule:

● Deconstructing DevSecOps (October 18)

● Detecting Cybersecurity Threats With AI (October 24)

● Real-Life Cybersecurity Nightmares (October 25)

To register, visit the Flatiron School website.

Cybersecurity Career Opportunities

For the latest openings in cybersecurity careers, check CybersecurityHQ.