Sedara started a decade ago in co-founder Darrick Kristich’s basement.
As the Buffalo-based cybersecurity business grew, it expanded to a few thousand square feet at UB Downtown Gateway and then last year about doubled its office space, moving to The Innovation Center. The firm is already outgrowing its offices and plans to add on another 4,000 square feet at the center by the end of this year.
CEO Kristich said the business’ strategy has been being able to pivot and expand while also staying in its lane: cybersecurity.
“We don’t do IT services, and we don’t plan to,” he said. “We’re really focused on cybersecurity as a whole.”
The startup began as a managed detection and response security provider and about five years ago recognized the need to add a consultative arm to the business. Sedara created a cybersecurity development system that includes risk and gap assessments and red team testing, where its staff act as adversaries to provide security feedback.
The company now has four business quadrants based off of industry standards, best practices, government regulations and National Institute of Standards and Technology framework.
“(Customers) can start wherever they have the most need or feel the most comfortable, so they don’t have to go to other service providers to get coverage for various aspects of their security program,” Kristich said.
The strategy appears to be paying off. The business filled about 16 new full-time positions last year, bringing its total to 32, and currently has four job openings. Kristich said it’s likely the company will hire at least 15 more this year.
Year-over-year gross revenue grew close to 90% last year, and so far Sedara is on track to grow another 90% this year. The size of the business’ customers has also been steadily getting larger, so more enterprise organizations will help add to that trajectory, he added.
Now, the business is doubling down on its cybersecurity focus. Over the last 18 months, Sedara has been working on developing a web-based software, a platform called “synergy,” that will be a wrap-around tool to bridge all the elements of cybersecurity together.
The platform will be released over the next couple months to customers and will launch to the public this summer in stages.
“Synergy” can be used as a wrap-around tool for all of Sedara’s different offerings, customers' in-house cybersecurity, third parties’ cybersecurity outside of Sedara and all of the above. The platform integrates with existing platforms.
“We’re putting work into pulling those all together,” Kristich said. “We definitely saw a need, just from an industry perspective.”
