Eclypsium Series A Press Release
It is an exciting time here at Eclypsium, and I wanted to take this moment to share some big news and talk about where we are going as a company. First, we are happy to announce we have closed an $8.75 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group with continued participation from existing investors, Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital and Ubiquity Ventures. It is truly an honor to be able to build our vision while working with such great investors and people. And as part of that, we are happy to announce that Tim Porter, the Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, will be joining the Eclypsium Board of Directors.
This is a major step for the company, but also an important step for the security industry. We are tackling some of the most challenging and unaddressed problems in information security today. By focusing on the firmware layer, we are defending the area where attackers are the most sophisticated, vulnerabilities are the most prevalent and persistent, and security controls are the weakest. That is important work.
For years firmware implants and backdoors have been the tools of choice for the most sophisticated attackers looking to steal information and cause damage. Now we see those same techniques being used in widespread attacks and malware campaigns. Likewise, organizations such as NIST and the UK NCSC see major risks in the technology supply chain and are driving organizations to ensure that the technology they buy is safe and trustworthy.
In the past year, we saw the massive impact of hardware level vulnerabilities in the form of the Spectre and Meltdown class of vulnerabilities. And while these are the most well-known, there are many more vulnerabilities and weaknesses that can lead to the compromise of a device. During our Beta program, evaluating thousands of devices, we found that more than 77% of the devices we analyzed had outdated firmware, and nearly 100% were vulnerable to known attacks.
All of these trends point to the same conclusion – the firmware layer is a major unaddressed source of risk for the enterprise. This is why I believe we have a huge opportunity in front of us. Taking on the world’s most sophisticated hackers is no small task. Neither is building a world-class company. We aim to do both while pioneering a new type of IT security.
