Galvanick – a cybersecurity solution for protecting industrial infrastructure against cyber attacks – announced recently its $10 million seed round. Major investors in this round included MaC Venture Capital, Founders Fund, Village Global, Countdown Capital, Hanover Technology Investment Management, Shrug Capital, 8090 Industries, and over 25 angel investors specializing in cybersecurity, manufacturing, finance, and defense. And Galvanick plans to use the capital to make additional core hires and expand the use of its initial product – an industrial-first Extended Detection & Response (XDR) platform – to additional advanced manufacturing and critical infrastructure facilities.
Galvanick was built by a skilled team, including co-founder Joshua Steinman, the ex-military former Senior Director for Cyber on the National Security Council who architected the 2018 National Cyber Strategy, as well as Co-Founders Brandon Park, who helped stand up Amazon’s global industrial cybersecurity program, and Feliks Pleszczynski, a former trader, economist, and White House staffer. The engineering team at Galvanick comes from Amazon, Google, Uber, and Bechtel, and has deep experience securing industrial systems against cyber attacks.
Over the past 30 years, industrial enterprises have replaced manually-operated equipment with computer-operated equipment, trading increased efficiency for unknown and potentially catastrophic downside risk. And these industrial systems are now under increasingly frequent cyber attacks, which can compromise drug manufacturing, turn off safety systems at oil refineries, or spoil millions of pounds of meat, costing billions of dollars in just the past five years.
The founding team at Galvanick spent 6 months interviewing experts from across the world to understand why securing industrial systems against cyber-attacks was so challenging. And in the end, it came down to two key insights: first, industrial cybersecurity talent is extremely expensive to hire (a recent survey yielded less than 10,000 Americans), and second, disparate industrial data streams are nearly impossible to analyze in real-time. Galvanick’s initial product – which is an industrial-first XDR platform – aggregates data from industrial assets and environments, and continuously monitors for threats, enabling both operations and IT/security teams to quickly understand the difference between, and context around, normal and malicious behavior.
The current estimates put industrial cybersecurity spending at 20 billion dollars per year and growing. As machinery gets connected to networks, the potential points of failure drastically increase. Galvanick combats risks to industrial systems and networks, creating a new gold standard of cybersecurity.
The attacks against industrial infrastructure are increasing, and bringing with them the risk of significant downtime, and even physical hazards. And recent incidents at major industrial facilities have cost billions of dollars. Plus without any ability to continuously monitor industrial infrastructure against cyber attacks, the insurance industry is re-evaluating its coverage for cyber threats. At the same time, the Federal Government is looking at new requirements for critical industries to protect their infrastructure.
Under Steinman’s tenure as the senior cyber policymaker in the United States, he led government-wide efforts to improve the cybersecurity of the maritime industry, space industry, defense industry, and critical infrastructure. And that activity has continued with the 2023 National Cyber Strategy, which has continued and accelerated much of his work, with regulations being developed at numerous departments and agencies.
KEY QUOTES:
“Cyber attacks against industrial systems are on the rise, and they not only affect a firm’s bottom line, but can pose a physical hazard to facilities and employees. Hiring industrial cybersecurity specialists is hard; the Galvanick platform was built with industrial systems in mind, and enables your existing team to watch over these critical environments while preserving uptime and reliability.”
— Joshua Steinman, CEO and Co-Founder of Galvanick
“Galvanick is building on years of both open source technology development, and cybersecurity research. Cybersecurity breaches are a looming threat over industrial companies; we are excited to help Galvanick bring cutting edge technology to market.”
— Mike Palank, General Partner at MaC Venture Capital
