Tag Archive for: Fund

On the podcast: Why a hedge fund joined VC’s cybersecurity arms race

/in


Hosts Adam Lewis and Alec Davis discuss recent coverage of the femtech frenzy, PE’s march on VC and an update on the red-hot fintech space. Then, Maverick Ventures managing director Matt Kinsella joins the pod to discuss why hedge funds are getting to venture, how that influx of capital will impact the industry and the never-ending arms race within cybersecurity. 

Listen to all of Season 4 and subscribe to get future episodes of “In Visible Capital” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen. For inquiries, please contact us at [email protected].

Transcript

Matt: They are like some of the best swag to send out to your customer. That’s great. Think that they don’t get some Maverick Yeti mug. I work for a place called Maverick, and it’s a hedge fund with about $12 billion under management. It’s an early-stage venture fund called Maverick Ventures, which is where I spend most of my time. We also have a growth equity fund, which is a bit of a newer offering from us.

Maverick’s around since 1993. I’ve been here since 2005. I started here out of school after Notre Dame and have been here ever since. It’s a long time to be at one place, but I’ve been able to do a lot of interesting things while I’ve been here. The first chunk of my career was all focused on public equity markets. I worked at our hedge fund and did mostly software investing. Then in 2014, moved over to help get Maverick Ventures off the ground and have been focused on that ever since.

James: You made the switch from public to private. We call that crossover investing. It’s definitely like a hot topic. It’s something that has really upended the venture capital world. I’m just wondering, from your point of view, how big of a mindset shift was that going from public software to early-stage startups?

Matt: It was quite a mindset shift. The way Maverick has gone about this is when we had a public equity investment vehicle and then an early-stage investment vehicle. Really those are very different investment strategies. At the end of the day. You’re still trying to find great companies that you think are going to be worth a lot more in the future. The signals you look for in the analysis you do are…

Source…

We must fund better public-service cyber security

/in


Today has been billed by cyber experts as a kind of D-day for our hacked public service health system. Many experts fear there may be publication of vital private information on the dark web.

t has been a difficult 10 days for the Irish health authorities, already beleaguered by the 14-month-old Covid-19 crisis, and now suddenly facing something which descended like a thunderbolt.

It is too easy to be wise after the event. Yes, it was clear that Irish public sector cyber security was at best poor, and at worst borderline non-existent.

There have been many warnings that this was an accident waiting to happen. We have also now learned of the full extent of the parlous position of State institutions which had the name of being in charge of security against attacks from ruthless and amoral cyber criminals.

Lamentably, we have seen just how our public services do not have even a semblance of a ‘Plan B’ when computer systems fail to perform. The bewildering powerlessness of public sector staff and the dismay of citizens who depend upon their services must now be an urgent call to arms.

Recently we have seen the Irish banks rightly being called to book by the State authorities for their inadequate computer security and backup…

Source…

North Korea’s army of hackers rival CIA & are ‘world’s biggest bank robbers’ who steal billions to fund Kim’s nukes

/in


NORTH Korea’s elite army of 7,000 cyber soldiers rival the CIA in their expertise and wreak chaos as “the world’s biggest bank robbers”, experts say.

The regime’s tech wizards are groomed from childhood to steal billions around the globe — which tyrant Kim Jong-un spends on weapons and his nuclear missile program.

Kim Jong-un has an army of cyber soldiers waging financial war around the world

5

Kim Jong-un has an army of cyber soldiers waging financial war around the worldCredit: Reuters
State-backed hackers are estimated to have stolen billions of dollars to fund his nukes

5

State-backed hackers are estimated to have stolen billions of dollars to fund his nukesCredit: Getty

Experts warn Kim’s expert hackers are a bigger threat to the world than Vladimir Putin’s cyber criminals in Russia.

Crippling attacks on NHS hospitals and Sony Pictures in recent years were a “wake up call” highlighting their growing reach.

Other targets in more than 150 countries have included military sites, international banks and Bitcoin investors.

And earlier this year it was reported Pyongyang’s keyboard warriors tried to hack into drug maker Pfizer to steal secrets of its Covid vaccine.

Yet a report last month in New Yorker Magazine revealed how the West had been ignoring alarm bells for years.

As long ago as 2003, one South Korean expert warned the North’s cyber operation was “on a par with the CIA” — but the US reportedly dismissed it as propaganda.

HOTHOUSED

The secretive regime has been building its army of “information soldiers” since at least the mid-1990s, experts say.

The late dictator Kim Jong-il was quick to see the internet as a threat to his dynasty – and also an opportunity to even the odds against superpowers in the digital age.

In 2005, a Korean People’s Army book quoted Kim as saying: “If the internet is like a gun, cyber attacks are like atomic bombs.”

Despite being almost totally isolated — with only a tiny number of people having internet access — North Korea has developed what is believed to be the most sophisticated criminal hacking operation in the world.

Defectors have revealed how the brightest students are plucked from primary schools and groomed as cyber warriors.

They are housed at elite schools and universities in the capital, and then sent to military bases to learn how to write viruses, program weapons guidance systems and…

Source…

Senators Cite Colonial Pipeline Hack in Calling for Cyber Response and Recovery Fund

/in


The cyberattack that has shut down a major supply line for energy to much of the East Coast is the kind of event that would have triggered a release of funding outlined in legislation to help the government respond to such incidents, key senators said in a hearing Wednesday.

“I know we’re here today to focus on federal cybersecurity. But I think it’s important to discuss the attack that we have just recently seen on Colonial Pipeline, one of the largest attacks on critical infrastructure in our history,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said. “Last month, Ranking Member, [Rob] Portman [R-Ohio] and I introduced the Cyber Response and Recovery Act which would give the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to declare a significant incident and use [the] Cyber Response and Recovery Fund after events like this.”

Peters, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, was leading a hearing on the federal government’s efforts to improve its cybersecurity following the SolarWinds hack, which was part of a campaign that compromised scores of organizations, including nine federal agencies.

The chair and ranking member touted their legislation while drawing attention to what they said were lapses in both public and private entities’ communications with the government.

The Cyber Response and Recovery Fund that the legislation creates would keep $20 million available for DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to reimburse other departments they need to call in to help respond to cyberattacks and to get information out to related entities to mitigate the impact of such events.

But in Colonial’s case, Brandon Wales, CISA’s acting director, told Portman that the company did not contact CISA after they were targeted by ransomware criminals. CISA was engaged only after the FBI brought them in and still does not possess the technical details that would help them to advise other critical infrastructure entities, Wales said.

Wales said this is understandable since it’s still early in the response, and that CISA has a good relationship with Colonial, but Portman did not accept that argument.  

“It seems to me we also have to worry about these…

Source…