The rapid acceleration of digital adoption has led to increased cybersecurity threats. Attacks are growing more commonplace and sophisticated in nature. While much of the focus has been on detecting threats, organizations are scrambling to figure out how to disarm a threat quickly and understand how it happened. Cado Security is a digital forensics platform that helps the enterprise quickly determine what architecture is impacted and the implications. Traditional digital forensics platforms offer similar solutions but pinpointing exactly where there is a vulnerability takes hours of manually combing through disparate data. With Cado’s automatic data capture functionality, organizations can now approach their investigations with a tactical approach at cloud speed.
London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder James Campbell to learn more about the experience of founding this business at the onset of the pandemic, future plans, and recent round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $11.5M for the one-year old company.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Led by Blossom Capital with participation from existing investors including Ten Eleven Ventures, we raised $10 million in Series A funding, just six months after our seed round.
The new capital will be used to accelerate Cado Security’s growth through the expansion of key functions including engineering, customer support and go-to-market operations. The funding will also help significantly grow the Cado Security team and expand the value of the Cado Response platform for customers.
Tell us about your product or service.
Cado Security provides the first and only cloud-native digital forensics platform for enterprises. Its Cado Response Platform automates many steps in a digital investigation, enabling security professionals to quickly and precisely understand the impact of compromises and respond to data breaches faster. It is the only platform that provides forensic data capture of short-term data environments such as cloud-native architectures, containers and auto-scaling infrastructures.
With Cado Security, enterprises gain visibility across modern cloud environments to conduct digital forensic investigations (which was previously impossible), and easily investigate and respond to cyber incidents at cloud speed.
What inspired the start of Cado Security?
Despite the benefits the cloud can offer, there is still a realistic fear that security incidents in modern cloud environments can be a financial, legal and technical minefield. When a cyber incident occurs in the cloud today, security analysts spend countless days using a patchwork of rudimentary tools to manually collect and process the data needed for an investigation.
It can take days to obtain the data for just a single cloud-based system, all whilst the hacker is still running around exfiltrating data. Because of the heavy lift and time required to conduct a proper investigation, incidents often get closed without digging deeper than the surface level that’s presented in a detection platform.
As incident responders, this concept didn’t rest easy with Chris (cofounder) and I, as we found it frustrating how complicated and slow it was to help enterprises who had suffered cloud security incidents.
We founded Cado Security in April 2020 to provide a better solution for security professionals frustrated by the inadequacy of legacy tools. Despite the fact that it was hard to leave our comfortable jobs in the midst of a global pandemic, we had a plan, the energy and vision to do this — and would do it again in a heartbeat.
We wanted to free security analysts from having to triage alerts without proper investigation, simply because they didn’t have the time or cycles to do the investigation. Cado Security brought this vision to life — with the first cloud-native digital forensics platform for enterprises, enabling security teams to effectively investigate and respond to cyber incidents at cloud speed.
How is it different?
Cado Security is the only digital forensics platform that automates data capture and processing across all cloud and container environments, filling a huge gap for many organizations.
Today, security teams often make a decision on the severity of an incident by reviewing just 5% of the data surrounding that incident. Cado Security makes it easy for security analysts to look at 100% of the data of a system that has been impacted, so you can make fully informed decisions and identify the root cause.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We are targeting the cloud security market, which is estimated to be worth around $68.5 billion by 2024.
What’s your business model?
We are targeting enterprises via a direct sales method. In addition, we’re building strategic partnerships that will enhance our go-to-market strategy.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
We founded Cado Security right in the midst of the pandemic in April 2020, as enterprises were shifting to the cloud to enable their remote workforces to successfully work from anywhere. This uptick in the cloud introduced new complexities and risks enterprises had never seen before. Security teams didn’t have the time to become experts in the cloud amidst the shift, and hackers noticed. Cado Security gives enterprises the ability to speed up cloud investigations, staying one step ahead of cybercriminals during a period of workplace upheaval.
Certainly one of the tricky points of the pandemic has been onboarding a new team, entirely remotely. It certainly added to some logistical hurdles, however more so added the challenge of ensuring that the team felt like a team, even though they have never met each other. So spending time on addressing this was important to us, and I feel it has really paid off. We have such an amazing team, even though it’s only been a short time, it genuinely feels like we have all been working together for a long time.
Certainly one of the tricky points of the pandemic has been onboarding a new team, entirely remotely. It certainly added to some logistical hurdles, however more so added the challenge of ensuring that the team felt like a team, even though they have never met each other. So spending time on addressing this was important to us, and I feel it has really paid off. We have such an amazing team, even though it’s only been a short time, it genuinely feels like we have all been working together for a long time.
What was the funding process like?
It certainly keeps you busy, however it is exciting and can be fun. One of our investors described the process to be a little like dating, and I think rings true for me. It’s about going on a number of dates or “meetings” and gradually getting to know each other and making sure everything feels like the right fit.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
I think one of the biggest challenges is really ensuring that you keep focus on the goals and don’t forget about your day to day. You want to make sure the process of raising and funding does not impact the operations of the business too much.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Grow, grow, grow! We are excited to have so much interest in what we are doing, and our focus is to grow to keep up with that interest. We have an exciting roadmap planned for the year ahead, some very cool features and tech coming out, that we are itching to share with our customers and beyond.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Don’t give up! Don’t be afraid to get a fresh set of eyes and ears to help and provide guidance if you have been at it for a while. Make sure you clearly understand and are able to articulate your proposition, its value, the market you’re tackling, and also why you and your team. Be proactive as well, get out and network, generate some noise, make sure you get feedback from prospective customers and investors alike. Hang in there, there will be ups and downs that’s normal, just remember that.
Don’t give up! Don’t be afraid to get a fresh set of eyes and ears to help and provide guidance if you have been at it for a while. Make sure you clearly understand and are able to articulate your proposition, its value, the market you’re tackling, and also why you and your team. Be proactive as well, get out and network, generate some noise, make sure you get feedback from prospective customers and investors alike. Hang in there, there will be ups and downs that’s normal, just remember that.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We’re expanding our team and growing internationally. We’re currently hiring in London, if you’re a developer or operations person, please apply at cadosecurity.com.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
Both Chris and I love playing a bit of basketball. Now that restrictions are easing in London, the rings are back, and we are looking forward to our next pickup game at the park on the weekends.
