Tina Williams-Koroma is still figuring out how to best balance her time and responsibilities between leading a cybersecurity consulting firm full time, and taking care of two new babies — one, a three-and-a-half-month-old human, and the other, a fledgling cyber startup.
It’s daunting at times, Williams-Koroma said, but a recurring problem she observed in the seven and a half years she has spent at the helm of Baltimore’s TCecure LLC convinced her there was a clear need for a new kind of product in the cyber market, and that the risk of starting up a new business now was worth it.
Williams-Koroma has spent the last two years developing and spinning out her latest cyber product and company, CyDeploy, which was inspired by an issue she saw among her TCecure customers. Time and time again, she observed a kind of tension between those who hold chief information officer-type positions and those who hold chief information security officer-type positions when it comes to launching software security updates. Essentially, she explained, it is common for a CISO to want to deploy new software security updates as soon as possible in an effort to keep the firm’s data protected, while CIOs are commonly more hesitant, worried about things like “What will break if we make this update?”
Fear of the unknown when it comes to security updates is a problem that affects organizations of all types and sizes, even those small businesses that don’t have executives overseeing IT infrastructure, Williams-Koroma said. She designed the CyDeploy tech to assuage those fears.
CyDeploy’s technology uses artificial intelligence to allow companies to test security updates by launching them in a cloud-based replica of their systems, so any potential problems can be detected before they cause real harm to the business. In a time when cyber attackers are becoming more and more aggressive, and the frequency and toll of hacks continue to rise, Williams-Koroma said her tech is intended to resolve the tension between making security updates quickly, and executing them safely. Her target customer base includes U.S.-based enterprise companies with around 1,000 employees, as well as managed service providers with around 50 customers.
CyDeploy has secured some early funding, including $11,000 dollars from pitch competitions and $90,000 from Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program. It has also raised about $400,000 through a pre-seed, or “friends and family” funding round, and is working with the University of Maryland School of Law to secure a full patent for its cyber product. Williams-Koroma said after many months of “scrappy” growth, she is ready to accelerate commercialization of CyDeploy, and is looking to raise a more significant funding round to make that happen.
She is also making plans to find a better balance in her work. She said she hopes to add another C-level executive at TCecure who can help to run that business, so she can dedicate more focus and attention to growing CyDeploy. She also hopes to be able to hire some additional executives for CyDeploy soon. In the meantime, she said advisers like Luke Cooper, who exited a Baltimore-based tech products repair startup, Fixt, last year, and Anupam Joshi, chair of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, are helping her learn the ropes of building a successful product-based tech business.
Williams-Koroma said building this company — and especially building a venture capital-seeking tech company led by a Black woman — is a new, difficult challenge, but one she is excited to take on.
“Being an entrepreneur, you’re in a constant state of risk, reward, opportunity…but I try not to get discouraged,” Williams-Koroma said. “I’m already in a space that doesn’t have a lot of color or women in it. I’ve made it this far and despite the stats and all of the odds, I’m leaning in.”
