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Cyber Thoughts Newsletter
November 2024
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” – William Gibson.
This is true for many things, but today, we want to discuss Cybersecurity and how some markets lag behind others, specifically Mexico and how it differs from the US.
We went to Mexico for Tech Week, and Mexico City is amazing. It’s vibrant with excellent food and energy. It probably helped that it was the week before F1 and Dia De Los Muertos. It was just a great event.
One consistent theme we heard from the people we spoke with was that Mexico’s tech infrastructure lagged behind the US, and this made security especially difficult. Nevermind cloud security, many companies have been running IT systems from 2005. This makes the job of securing the systems extremely difficult. One can’t just roll out the newest security tools. It can also increase expenses since you need to upgrade the entire system just to get started. There was a feeling that simpler products do better in such a market, platforms like Salesforce have too many options, and so more streamlined though less powerful applications tend to win.
Combined with smaller budgets and executive leadership that aren’t fully bought into the concept of adopting the latest technology, it can be a hard place for security companies to operate. With that said, it’s also a big market with fast-growing companies, so attackers are starting to take notice.
Perhaps the right way to enter such a market is with services. Managed Security Service Providers might have a good story here since they can work with the technology stack the companies have, help them modernize, and become trusted partners. Another potential approach is Open Source tools that focus on simplicity might be able to outcompete the larger platforms that have taken root in the US. Splunk has been the winner in a mature market, but it is expensive and requires a large investment in expertise that makes it difficult to adopt; perhaps a simpler option could win there.
We recently started listening to SoftWar by Jason Lowery. You can find a link below in our podcast section, but what makes this really fascinating is that Jason Lowery’s book, Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Significance of Bitcoin, was removed from circulation in July 2023. This withdrawal included its removal from major booksellers and the MIT library. Lowery stated on Twitter that he was “ordered to take SOFTWAR down & asked to stop talking about the subject publicly,” but did not provide further details or context.
If you’re like us, that makes this catnip. While used copies can be found online for hundreds of dollars, there is also an audio reading still available as a podcast! Forbidden knowledge tastes the sweetest.
Halloween. Are you even alive if you don’t dress your dog up for a parade?
Not our dog, sadly, but mad respect.
Lastly, if you appreciate our highlighted content, please follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, where we regularly post about things worthy of attention.
What We're Reading
Here's a curated list of things we found interesting.
Money, Politics, and a Tale of Three LLMs
Our partner Craig Lifschutz wrote a fun, and maybe even snarky, blog post about how various LLMs answered an investment question regarding the election.
I asked our friends ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the same question:“What is the best financial markets hedge trade you can construct if you’re concerned about the polarization of the US around the 2024 Presidential election?”
5 emerging cybersecurity companies
We play so early that these companies seem like giant incumbents to us, it’s fun to remember that others see these Unicorns as emerging.
Overview of 5 emerging private cybersecurity firms that have shown innovation and investor interest: Wiz, SandboxAQ, Tanium, Snyk and Arctic Wolf.
I own my LLM chat history, and so should you
Great geek blog about using the API interface to all the chatbots to create a single interface to them, with the bonus that one gains privacy benefits and gets to keep the chat history locally.
Like the rest of the world, I’ve embraced chatting to large language models (LLMs) as part of my professional and personal life. These thoughts-in-writing are important to me, and that’s why I keep a history of them on my own machine. And so should you.
Transactions
Deals that caught our eye.
Cyera acquires Trail Security for $162M; Cyera is now raising at a $3B valuation
This one caught our attention because it is pretty unique. Cyera, which was in stealth, raised $35M from VCs then was purchased by Cyera before ever launching. Interesting read.
The startup (Cyera) is acquiring Trail Security, a startup that was still in stealth mode building solutions for data loss prevention — essentially technology complementary to posture management to help secure data in the event of a breach. Cyera is paying $162 million for Trail in a mix of cash and shares, Cyera’s CEO and co-founder Yotam Segev told TechCrunch in an interview.
Podcasts
What we’re listening to.
The Security Detail Ep. 1: Veterans in Cybersecurity with Tom Marsland, board chair of VetSec | The Security Detail
Veterans bring invaluable skills in leadership, problem-solving, and discipline to the field of cybersecurity, making them highly sought-after candidates in the industry. In this episode, Tom Marsland, board chair of VetSec, explains how the non-profit helps veterans and transitioning military members find employment in the industry.
About Lytical
Lytical Ventures is a New York City-based venture firm investing in Corporate Intelligence, comprising cybersecurity, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Lytical’s professionals have decades of experience in direct investing generally and in Corporate Intelligence specifically.