DC cyber firm gets $3.5M investment in security software

A cybersecurity firm based in the nation’s capital just landed a $3.5 million investment to work on what it calls a “human memory-augmentation platform.”

Strategic Cyber Ventures, an investment firm focused on cybersecurity, announced Monday that it is spearheading the investments in Washington, D.C.-based Polarity to help the company develop its products, expand its engineering and technology teams and boost marketing efforts.

Polarity, which was founded by a handful of former intelligence officers and incident responders in 2014 and originally named Breach Intelligence, develops software that boosts a company’s institutional data and storage, the first of its kind for commercial purposes.

The developing platform would try to improve the sharing of information among security professionals to respond immediately to threats.

{mosads}Ron Gula, a former security tester for the National Security Agency turned founder of venture capital firm Gula Tech Ventures, also participated in the Polarity investment.

“Polarity is what cyber analysts and operator teams have needed for years and leads to security team information dominance,” Hank Thomas, Strategic Cyber Ventures’ chief operating officer, said in a statement. “It makes small teams bigger, big teams more lethal, and allows you to focus on actionable intelligence.”

“It is truly the future of search and will revolutionize intelligence, real-time cyber incident response and orchestration capabilities, and will quickly be adopted by sectors outside of security,” Thomas said.

The announcement could serve as a boost to the cybersecurity and technology sector in Washington, D.C. Strategic Cyber Ventures similarly announced a $3 million investment in ID DataWeb, another D.C.-based cyber company specializing in cloud services for identity security, in January.

Strategic Cyber Ventures was founded last February and is also based in D.C., focusing on investing in companies that thwart advanced cyber intrusions. The firm is backed by New York-based Hudson Bay Capital, according to The Washington Post.

“Ron [Gula] and I were both tired of incredible talent leaving the NSA going to Silicon Valley to raise money,” Tom Kellerman, a partner at Strategic Cyber Ventures, told the Post. “People who have spent 20 years protecting this country should be able to have an entrepreneurial experience in the region with people who understand their mission and their goals.”

The investment was cheered by Polarity CEO Paul Battista, who said it would be used to “show the world what human memory augmentation is and why it’s so critical.”