Cybersecurity

Two 'Cybersecurity' stories January 2015 - July 2015

Google Capital leads $100M investment to fund growth by Crowdstrike cybersecurity company

Google Capital has led a $100M investment in Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company with strong government ties, reports the WSJ. Supporting investors include Rackspace, Accel and Warburg Pincus.

Its head of investigations, Shawn Henry, is the former top computer-crimes official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crowdstrike’s D.C.-based chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, has a long history of calling out foreign hacker groups.

Crowdstrike offers a remote monitoring service for its clients’ networks, aiming to detect hacking attempts at an early stage. Where hackers have already penetrated, the company works to identify the group responsible.

Google Capital was formed last year to provide funding for successful companies looking for growth. It sits alongside Google Ventures, which provides early-stage funding for startups. Google Capital partner Gene Frantz said that they were “blown away” by the company tripling its billings year-on-year.

“We were blown away by CrowdStrike’s incredible growth and impressive customer adoption,” said Gene Frantz, partner at Google Capital. “They have a truly unique SaaS-based endpoint security model, a highly scalable subscription revenue model, and a visionary technical approach that has huge potential to transform the industry, which is why we’re thrilled to make this investment.”

China accused of protectionism through new cybersecurity rules aimed at western tech companies

The NY Times reports that the Chinese government has adopted a set of supposed cybersecurity regulations on western companies selling technology to banks. These requirements are so absurd that it would be impossible for companies like smartphone manufacturers to comply.

The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars’ worth of business in China.

The paper reports that while the regulations are so far limited to sales to Chinese banks, they are merely the first in a series of new cybersecurity policies expected to be introduced in the coming months, and businesses fear that they are designed to protect local manufacturers from foreign companies.

One theory raised in the NY Times piece is that the moves may be retaliation for an effective US ban on Huawei servers and networking products following concerns that they contained backdoor access for use by the Chinese government.