Security startup Synack announced Thursday they have closed a $1.5 million seed round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock Partners, Wing Venture Partners, Allegis Capital and Shape Security CEO Derek Smith.
A graduate of the most recent Techstars Boston class, Synack hinted they were looking to raise the round at Demo Day, highlighting the possibilities of their pay-for-performance crowdsourced security network.
“Hacking isn’t hard,” said Synack CEO Jay Kaplan on Demo Day—a fact alluded to by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last month. The nonprofit reported cybercrime may reach $100 billion per year. Synack’s goal, however, is to discover website vulnerabilities and resolve any issues.
Armed with experience from the National Security Agency, Synack’s founders find, and vet, the best security researchers to apply their skills to vulnerability testing in a military-grade trusted environment. As the startup notes, this “provides the first end-to-end testing environment with massive scalability.”
On Demo Day, Kaplan said Synack was able to spot nine vulnerabilities for their first pilot customer within three hours.
“Synack is developing stealth technologies that will form a new standard for vulnerability discover,” said Ted Schlein, general partner of KPCB, in a release. “Companies like Google and Facebook have demonstrated that using global white hat researchers is an outstanding way to identify security problems and Synack can deliver this capability to any commercial company without compromising security, privacy and confidentiality.”
Two weeks ago, the team moved to Silicon Valley, according to the Boston Business Journal, largely to be closer to Synack’s investors.
