Software Security: “A problem to solve now”
Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.
We have identified three emerging market segments which we intend to focus our investment on throughout 2022. These are:
· Metaverse and Immersive Technologies
· Software Security
· Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
In the second of our series on what we are looking for in 2022, we outline why we believe that rapid investment in software security is critical and what areas of this compelling market we will be focusing on.
Rising threat of attacks
Current investments include Smarttech247, Getvisibility, PreCog Systems & Nova Leah.
We plan to invest heavily in software security over the coming 12 months, leveraging our existing experience of backing seed-stage software companies in this arena. To date, 2021 was the biggest year of cyber-attacks globally and this is predicted to increase significantly in 2022. Cybersecurity is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes. Accenture’s cybersecurity resilience report reveals that a total of 82% of organisations have increased their cybersecurity budgets over the past year.
Despite this growing spend, digital transformation and cloud adoption has increased the attack surface exponentially, exposing vulnerable points for hackers to gain entry to systems. Right now, the world is playing catch up. Hackers, who have increasingly deeper pockets, are becoming more and sophisticated. The US Treasury recently announced that there have been payments of $5.5 billion in crypto currencies made to extortionists over last 36 months, an amount that might only be the tip of the iceberg.
The issue facing organisations has been further exacerbated by operating remote workforces. 2021 saw the highest average cost of a data breach in 17 years, rising from US$3.86 million to US$4.24 million on an annual basis according to recent IBM data. The ongoing COVID-19-powered shift to remote workforces has had a direct impact on the costs of data breaches, as the average cost was over US$1 million higher where remote work was a factor in causing the breach.
We believe this is a problem to solve now. As highlighted by Gartner, 60% of organisations will use cybersecurity risk as a “primary determinant” when choosing who to conduct business with. Artificial Intelligence will also play a key role in combating cybersecurity issues. Research by Capgemini recently found that two-thirds of businesses now believe AI is vital to identifying and countering critical cybersecurity threats, and nearly three-quarters of businesses are using or testing AI for this purpose.
A hot space
The imperative to protect increasingly digitised businesses, IoT devices, and consumers from cybercrime will propel global spending on cybersecurity products and services to $1.75 trillion cumulatively for the five-year period from 2021 to 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. The global cybersecurity market size is expected to gain momentum by reaching USD 366.10 billion in 2028. For these reasons, Sure Valley views the cybersecurity industry as being an incredibly hot space with huge growth opportunities over the coming years.
About Sure Valley Ventures:
Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.
In doing so, we aim to deliver robust returns to the founders and their teams, our investors, and society and the economy at large.
We have a great track record of accelerating start-ups from Seed to Scale-up in key high growth tech market sectors, at the frontiers of innovation. As well as equity, we provide entrepreneurs with access to a flexible, value add Platform, drawing on the team’s experience as founders to develop a programme which is tailored to each company’s individual needs. SVV’s platform also features a global network of advisors, based in leading innovation hubs across the globe, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and other key innovation centres in the USA as well as leading European and Asian hubs.
