CAT Labs is a company that is building cybersecurity protocols for crypto projects and retail and institutional investors to prevent hacks and mitigate vulnerabilities. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed CAT Labs founder and CEO Lilita Infante.
Lilita Infante’s Background
Infante was a Special Agent with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for over a decade.
“I was fortunate enough to work with an incredibly talented group of agents, analysts, and prosecutors and pioneered an early federal task force focusing exclusively on dark web and crypto-enabled crimes,” said Infante. “Besides taking down some of the most prolific crypto criminals, we devised many of the novel crypto and dark web-specific investigative techniques being used today by law enforcement agencies around the world. I also played an active role in creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) and policies for investigations involving digital assets. Last year, I was the lead agent on the case that took down Hydra Market – the largest and longest dark web market in the world.”
Formation Of CAT Labs
How did CAT Labs form? The explosion of crypto into the mainstream drove an unprecedented explosion in crypto-enabled crime, especially hacks scams, and fraud. And this created a massive backlog of cases which exposed multiple bottlenecks in crypto-focused investigations.
“I came across hundreds of heartbreaking cases where people lost their entire life savings to these crypto scams and hacks, some even resulting in suicides. Many times, the loss amounts didn’t meet the federal threshold and the cases were referred to local police departments, which often didn’t have as much experience and resources as federal agencies to work these kinds of cases. As a result, these victims had limited or no recourse,” Infante reflected. “I realized that in order to effectively address the problem, we have to approach it from two angles – 1) build more reactive tools for law enforcement to be able to work these cases at scale AND 2) build proactive cybersecurity tools and protocols to prevent digital asset theft from happening in the first place. I then identified the biggest bottlenecks on both sides and decided to build tools to address them to ensure that Web3 early adopters feel safe interacting with all the exciting technology coming out of the space and to allow this revolutionary industry to mature and flourish while weeding out the bad actors.”
Favorite Memory Building CAT Labs
What has been Infante’s favorite memory while building CAT Labs? “Overall, building a rockstar team who amaze me every day not only with their deep domain expertise but also with their passion for our mission to make Web3 safe for all market participants,” noted Infante.
Challenges Faced Building CAT Labs
What are some of the challenges Infante faced in building the company? Infante told me that one of the biggest challenges was raising funds as a solo female founder with no prior startup experience, and during a crypto market meltdown.
“During investor pitches, in a room with all-male investor teams, I would get asked questions like ‘How will you balance building a startup and being a mother?’ I highly doubt that these same investors would ask me this if I were a man!” Infante acknowledged. “Thankfully, these types of investors did not make it to my cap table, and I was ultimately blessed with an incredible group of investors who believed in the CAT Labs mission and my ability to execute and gave me the funding I needed to build an amazing team while also continuing to provide substantial support and mentorship along the journey. My investors are not scared by the bear market because they believe in the long-term potential of Web3 technology and understand the importance of building the right tools to secure the ecosystem and protect it from bad actors, which will ultimately drive adoption.”
Core Products
What are CAT Labs’ core products and features? Since launching, the company has generated several proprietary algorithms centered around security, encryption, and data extraction.
CAT Labs has 2 main crypto-focused verticals: forensics and cybersecurity. The first forensic tool is Recovery CAT, a digital asset recovery tool for law enforcement and asset recovery professionals to be able to quickly and at scale extract cryptocurrency artifacts from digital data and gain actionable intelligence on said artifacts. And the company’s security tools mitigate the top 5 vulnerabilities that expose investors to digital asset theft.
Biggest Milestones
What have been some of CAT Labs’ most significant milestones? “We have recently onboarded our first crypto security design partners and clients and completed the MVP build of Recovery CAT,” Infante emphasized.
Total Addressable Market
What is the total addressable market (TAM) size that CAT Labs is pursuing? Infante explained that the current global cybersecurity market is worth approximately $200 billion, but according to a McKinsey report – with only 10% penetration of security solutions today – the total opportunity amounts to a $2 trillion addressable market.
“Due to an unprecedented increase in cyber attacks in recent years, at least 45 US states have recently put forward bills to require companies operating in certain industries to have a proper cybersecurity program. It is expected that this push in regulation will significantly increase cybersecurity spending by US companies,” analyzed Infante. “For the public sector asset recovery tools are tapping into the projected global government technology spending of $588 billion. More specifically, the global forensic technology market was at $17.2 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $34.3 billion by 2027.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates CAT Labs from its competition?
“The CAT Labs team has deep domain expertise in crypto-specific forensics and cybersecurity,” replied Infante. “We have a unique understanding of the pain points produced by crypto-enabled crime, both from the public and private sector perspectives. Our tools fill the gaps not yet addressed by current solutions on the market and can serve as complements to many existing solutions for a more holistic approach to crypto forensics and cybersecurity.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of CAT Labs’ future company goals? “CAT Labs aims to be a global leader in crypto forensics and cybersecurity by building the necessary tools to secure the Web3 ecosystem and by partnering and integrating with other brilliant companies in the space such as blockchain analytics, forensics, and security firms that share our mission,” Infante concluded.
