On Tuesday, the grand prize winner in the Defense & Security category for the 2015 InvestMaryland Challenge was announced. The winner, Vienna, Va.-based cybersecurity vendor Bricata, was awarded a $100,000 grant and an Army Research Lab Incubator Opportunity.
The Vienna-based startup was also honored with the bwtech@UMBD Award and the Whiteford Taylor Preston Legal Services Award.
Bricata develops intrusion prevention systems, used for timely and actionable detection of cyberthreats. Bricata has worked to increase the speed and performance of detection while providing it at roughly half the cost of traditional intrusion protection, the company wrote in a press release.
The InvestMaryland Challenge consists of four separate competition categories, including IT hardware/software, defense/security, life sciences and sustainability.
“Bricata is redefining what ‘next-generation’ really means with respect to IPS technology. This award is a wonderful validation of the progress we’ve made so far and will certainly help us further develop our company into the world-class provider of cybersecurity technologies we know it can be,” Bricata CEO/President and Co-Founder John Trauth said in a statement.
The local cybersecurity space is extremely competitive and home to a group of high-potential startups, many of whom have founders with defense department related experience. In such an environment, the winner of this category must be a quickly growing and promising company. Bricata was chosen from a field of 214 category entrants by a group of “successful entrepreneurs, investors, educators and other judges in Maryland’s entrepreneurial community.”
(A full list of the InvestMaryland Challenge judges can be viewed here)
