By Mark Bailey
We are thrilled to welcome Cylance (www.cylance.com) to the DFJ Growth portfolio. Cylance’s flagship product, CylancePROTECT, represents the biggest advance in cybersecurity endpoint protection since the introduction of antivirus products which happened when I was an executive at Symantec Corporation roughly 25 years ago.
Unlike signature-based approaches used in today’s antivirus products, Cylance uses a breakthrough process based on artificial intelligence and math to identify malicious intent of files on endpoint computing devices (eg, PC’s, laptops, servers, and over time mobile, and Internet of Things devices). This predictive and algorithmic approach enables Cylance to prevent attacks from the most advanced and dangerous malware and targeted zero day threats in the world. Because these threats are often tailor-made and have never been seen before, signature-based approaches are almost completely ineffective in defending against the increasing number of these sophisticated attacks. CylancePROTECT allows enterprises to stop 99%+ of previously undetectable malware, an efficacy rate vastly higher than any other legacy endpoint security product on the market.
The enabling technology trends making this possible are increasingly powerful machine learning models, tools for managing immense data sets and highly scalable cloud computing resources. Cylance uses a broad collection of machine learning and mathematical models in conjunction with massive amounts of file data to identify traits and patterns in each file which indicate good or bad intent. The colossal amounts of computing power required to power this modeling would not have been affordable before the advent of highly scalable cloud computing resources (such as Amazon Web Services) that can be ramped up rapidly as needed, and then spun back down when the work is done. Furthermore, Cylance has managed to find a way to compress these powerful models into a 35MB model in memory that is easily deployed on an endpoint computing device. Unlike legacy antivirus products, CylancePROTECT requires no ongoing updates to maintain its unprecedented level of efficacy.
We have been tremendously impressed with the exceptional work of CEO/President and Founder, Stu McClure, and the rest of the Cylance team. In a market filled with bold claims and assertions, Cylance stands apart in its ability to deliver and protect its customers. In our diligence with customers and distributors, we heard repeatedly how Cylance was deployed at scale smoothly, and how after deployment the number of trouble tickets and antivirus and malware events declined dramatically. Both the product and the team receive extremely high marks from customers and distributors who have used the product and deployed at scale.
We welcome the Cylance team to a portfolio of distinguished companies that includes other cybersecurity leaders such as Ping Identity and Good Technology, as well as other category leading enterprise companies such as SimpliVity, DataStax, Sisense, Anaplan, and Sumo Logic. Welcome to the DFJ family!
Mark Bailey is a managing director at DFJ Growth @VentureOutlook
