Cybersecurity Firm Cynomi Raises $3.5M

Cybersecurity services provider Cynomi has raised $3.5 million in seed funding, money the firm says it will use to scale research and development and expand its footprint in the U.S. and U.K.

According to published reports Friday (Feb. 4), the investment came from Flint Capital, SeedIL and Lytical Ventures, as well as some angel investors, including Nir Giller, co-founder of Microsoft-owned security startup CyberX.

Led by veterans of Israel Defense Forces cybersecurity operations, Cynomi helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), serving as a “virtual chief information security officer (CISO)” and offering enterprise-level protection.

Cynomi, based in Israel and London, uses artificial intelligence to automate cybersecurity operations and is working with telecom firms and managed service providers in the U.K., Israel and the U.S.

“Billions of dollars are invested to secure enterprises, while SMBs are left behind,” said David Primor, co-founder and СЕО of Cynomi.

“The small and mid-market companies are substantially less equipped to deal with the ever-growing threat landscape — lacking the budget and staff, they are more prone to the devastating impacts of possible attacks. We emulate a human CISO, automatically providing IT and cybersecurity teams with a focused assessment and a prioritized remediation action plan.”

Read more: How Employee Training and Automated Defenses Can Protect Companies Against Phishing

PYMNTS examined the threats facing SMBs recently in our interview with Chuck Brooks, adjunct professor of cybersecurity risk management at Georgetown University.

Cyber criminals have traditionally gone after small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) due to a perceived lack of security, but have recently started branching out to attack healthcare companies and universities.

“Everyone gets phished, but small businesses are low-hanging fruit because they just don’t have the security resources and their people are not well-trained,” said Brooks. “Universities and healthcare industries [are also a common target] for the same reason, because they haven’t put a lot of money into security because they’re busy fighting diseases and educating people with those resources and those technologies.”