Why We Believe in Hadrian
Using applied AI to build a fully autonomous proactive offensive security solution
We continue to see increases in both cyberattacks and breaches that force security teams to rapidly adjust. And current solutions just can’t keep up — as Hacker One highlighted in their 2021 Hacker Report: “Traditional solutions can no longer keep pace with the dual requirements of speed and security. Internal security teams struggle to scale their skills and expertise with the growing and agile attack surfaces brought on by rapid digital transformation and remote working.”
We are super excited to partner with Hadrian to address this massive problem.
Hadrian is a London- and Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup building a fully autonomous proactive offensive security solution. Both defensive (blue team) and offensive (red team) approaches are critical to proper security. While blue teams use tools to detect, simulate, and protect against threats, the red teams proactively simulate real-world techniques and search for security vulnerabilities that a cybercriminal might exploit to cause harm. And as cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to assist them, red teams also should utilise the latest machine learning technology to help them better detect vulnerabilities — at a scale (breadth and depth) that would otherwise be impossible.
Here are our top 3 reasons why we believe in Hadrian:
1 An exceptional team: Hadrian is led by an exceptional team with a deep passion to solve this problem. Rogier Fischer and co-founder Olivier Beg have earned substantial white-hat hacking bounties from companies like PayPal, Yahoo, and major banks before they even turned 14. They are joined by co-founders Tijl van Vliet, an experienced cloud-architect and entrepreneur, and Maurice Clin, another experienced entrepreneur and LBS classmate of Rogier. And this is Rogier’s second venture — at age 17 he founded the very successful crypto trading platform LiteBit.
2 Solving a massive societal problem: Cybersecurity is critical to us all — breaches have real impact on people and companies. And the more digital we are, the more cybersecurity breaches continue to be a problem. One just has to read the daily news to know that the problem is getting worse and that current solutions are not sufficient.
3 Going for a unique solution: Hadrian is not interested in just building a slightly better cybersecurity product, or just automating the workflow of red teams. That approach won’t solve the problem. They have an ambition to build a truly unique, fully autonomous solution to offensive cybersecurity, utilising the very latest cloud and machine learning technology. While most current solutions execute on a preconfigured and scheduled penetration test, Hadrian’s solution is continuous and autonomous (i.e. self-learning). Hadrian will be always on, always learning, and always evolving to combat threats.
In partnering with Hadrian, Slimmer AI co-led a €2.5m pre-seed investment round, together with San Francisco-based Village Global, and an amazing group of international angel investors and cybersecurity experts. Hadrian fits Slimmer AI’s mission of using AI as a force for good to power how we work — building products and ventures to help people make better decisions and do less routine work. It joins our growing venture portfolio, including Sentinels, Biller, and Vesper. You can learn more about the Slimmer AI venture studio approach via my blog post or by visiting our website.
We are thrilled to partner with Hadrian and welcome them to the Slimmer AI portfolio!
