At a glance.
- Instagram’s Threads reaches over 100 million users in five days.
- Mergers and acquisitions.
- Investments and exits.
- Executive moves.
- Company news.
- Labor markets.
Instagram’s new twitter-like application, Threads, reaches over 100 million users in five days.
Threads, Instagram’s newest message board application slammed into operation with over two-million users registering in two hours. Economic times reports that the upward trend continued and, on July 10th, Meta’s newest creation is sporting a cool 100 million users in just five days of operation. It is unknown if this new platform will surpass its competitor, Twitter, any time soon, however this hasn’t stopped Twitter from firing accusations that Meta stole trade secrets from Twitter in the creation of Threads, as Mint explains in an article. There has also been some concern as to the amount and type of data that Threads collects, including financial data, internet search history, documents, pictures, and voice recordings. It should be noted, however, that Twitter, Instagram, and generally any social media site collects user data and information for third party advertisements. Whether you are pro or anti-Threads, it is showing promise in its first steps.
Mergers and acquisitions.
Honeywell International has announced its intention to buy Scadafence, an Israeli operational-technology and Internet-of-Things cyber security provider. The Wall Street Journal writes that Honeywell hasn’t commented on the exact price of acquisition.
ARN reports that the data center provider DC Two has acquired the Perth, Australia-based security and intelligence firm Thomas Cyber. The total price of acquisition was $435,000 in multiple tranches until 2025.
Investments and exits.
GlobeNewswire reported that SAVVY has exited Stealth with $30 million in funding to “Enable Safe Use of SaaS Applications at Scale.
AUCloud raised 8.5 million in a capital raise which was fully subscribed and underwritten by businesswoman Cathie Reid, and Peter MAloney, the newly appointed CEO of AUCloud, according to FinTech Global.
Nokod Security raised $8 million “which will be used to establish a presence in the United States market, as well as to expand the R&D teams and support novel research of security vulnerabilities in the low-code/no-code domain,” writes Help Net Security.
BuisnessWire reports that Outdid has raised 2.5 million “to provide identity verification in a private and trustless manner.”
Executive moves.
Optery announced that Paul Mander and Hideko Tachibana have joined their senior leadership team with Mr. Mander taking the role of general manager for business, and Mrs. Tachibana joining as vice president of finance operations.
In a press statement, Kivera welcomed Joe Lea as its new CEO. “In this role, Lea will oversee and manage the company in its mission to provide a generational leap in cloud security through proactive policy enforcement.”
CityBiz reports that Blackpoint Cyber has announced that MacKenzie Brown will be joining the fold as vice president of Security. “With a wealth of experience in organizational security maturity and incident response, Brown joins Blackpoint Cyber after successful tenures at Optiv and Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART).”
Company news.
Business Insurance reports that cyber insurance rates have dropped 10% in June, when compared to the year prior. Howden, a broker,attributed the decrease in cost to increased market competition.
AuthID has announced a 1-for-8 reverse stock split effective July 10th prior to market opening. GlobNewswire reports, “At the Annual Meeting of stockholders of the Company held on June 26, 2023, the stockholders approved an amendment to the Company’s Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to effect a Reverse Stock Split with the exact ratio to be set by our Board of Directors.”
GlobeNewswire reports that GreenPages, a strategic services provider in cloud, cybersecurity, and digital transformation services has changed its brand to Blue Mantis. Blue MAnti explained the change in a press statement, “Our new brand identity and name change to Blue Mantis matches and strategically aligns with our ongoing commitment to innovation and ingenuity and our proven ability, agility and adaptability to continuously navigate many rapidly changing business cycles.”
Sophos has announced a partnership with Cysurance, a risk mitigation company that “insures, warranties and certifies security solutions.” Sophos writes, “As cyberthreats increase in complexity and velocity, MDR is quickly becoming an essential requirement for organizations to manage their cybersecurity posture. Most organizations simply can’t keep up with the evolving threat landscape, as evidenced by the 59% of U.S. security defenders who say today’s threats are too advanced for their organizations to deal with on their own.”
Fast Mode reports that Palo Alto announced its new cloud location in Poland, to give customers “high-performance access to Palo Alto Networks best-in-class cybersecurity capabilities while meeting their data residency needs”
Labor markets.
Insider released a report highlighting what it calls the “lazy management” problem plaguing the cybersecurity industry. The report follows a software engineer named Graham. (His real name has been changed to protect his identity.) His journey through the various development teams he was assigned ultimately ended in a fulfilling, but ultimately terminal, project developing machine learning to improve Amazon music recommendations. He described the multiple occurrences of supervisors and managers failing upwards and getting promoted out of projects which amounted to nothing. Ultimately, the main issue brought up is the “fake work” being assigned to employees. “The conception of lazy employees raking in big paychecks to do little lays the blame in the wrong place. Oftentimes, employees are getting plenty of work done; it's just that the projects are of little to no importance to the company's bottom line. The tech employees spoke with us on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.”
Scott Latham, a strategic-management professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, attributes the lack of meaningful products being produced to "lazy management."