BitVoyant

Aug 8, 2017

Add a firm led by former intelligence agency officials and a Morgan Stanley executive to the growing list of cybersecurity companies attracting investments this summer. BlueteamGlobal , a merger between BitVoyant, K2G, and K2 Cyber Defense, officially launched on Aug. 3 with $125 million in new funding. The company, headed by CEO Jim Rosenthal, former COO at Morgan Stanley, will offer its threat intelligence services to larger organizations and managed security services to small and midsized businesses (SMBs), beginning in North America and Europe before a planned expansion into other territories. According to Rosenthal, BlueteamGlobal approach is inspired by his time protecting one of the world's largest financial services institutions. "In my role at Morgan Stanley, I spent considerable time focused on cybersecurity issues, working with Tom – as the security lead on Morgan Stanley's board – to build out an elite team to protect the firm against advanced attack techniques – in the same way that the national security agencies take on that role for the U.S. government," Rosenthal said in a statement. "BlueteamGlobal will provide the same kind of expertise and intelligence to companies around the world." The rest of the company's executive roster carries some impressive qualifications. BlueteamGlobal's managed security and professional services unit is led by Austin Berglas, who headed the FBI's New York Cyber Branch, and Milan Patel, who formerly served as the CTO of the FBI's Cyber Division. Hailing from the United States National Security Agency's (NSA) Threat Operations Center is its former director, Daniel Ennis, who along with Ron Feler, a former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces' storied Unit 8200 cyber intelligence unit, will lead the company's cyber threat intelligence practice. Bolstering the company's cybersecurity capabilities are strategic business partnership with fellow data security specialists K2 Intelligence and Team8. BlueteamGlobal's launch and financing round follows a string of investments in cybersecurity firms. Late last month, intrusion detection and prevention startup Bricata raised $8 million . Also in July, San Francisco-based Corelight raised $9.2 million in a Series A round of financing. The firm offers security appliances that use the Bro open-source network analysis framework to unearth advanced network attacks. On July 11, HyTrust, a cloud security vendor, announced it raised $36 million and acquired virtualization security company DataGravity. Nearly a month ago, Darktrace raised $75 million which the company plans to use to advance its AI-enabled cybersecurity platform. SECURITY DAILY NEWSLETTER GET SECURITY NEWS IN YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY |