Cybersecurity is no longer just about credit card hacks and identity theft.
"It's now about hackers causing physical damage in the real world," said Amir Husain, founder and CEO of Austin-based artificial intelligence startup SparkCognition. "It can happen at a large turbine at a utility company, oil and gas pumps at oil fields and critical infrastructure such as the electric grid."
Credit: Lori Hawkins
Credit: Lori Hawkins
SparkCognition has developed machine-learning technology to predict when a company's systems might fail or get hacked, and on Tuesday it announced a new $6 million investment to expand its efforts.
The company received the funding from Verizon Ventures, CME Ventures and previous investors including the Entrepreneurs' Fund and Alameda Ventures. The company has received a total of about $10 million since it was founded in 2013.
SparkCognition's technology works by modeling physical and virtual assets, and continuously learning from the data. It analyzes data in real time, allowing it to alert the user if there are changes that could signal a problem such as a failure or cyberattack.
The company focuses on the energy sector as well as government entities with Internet-connected physical assets that could be at risk of cyber attack.
"You're talking about 50 billion to 100 billion industrial systems or things connected to the Internet," Husain said. "This is a scope and scale where frankly human security and maintenance teams can't contend with the scale and complexity of the emerging security picture."
That's where artificial intelligence comes in, he said. "Cognitive systems augment human capabilities, but at machine speed and machine scale."
The company has 40 customers, mainly Fortune 500 companies, including Flowserve Corp., which manufacturers pumps, valves, seals and components. It has partnerships with Verizon Wireless and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The company will use the funding to build out its 40-person team, and is hiring in sales, engineering, data science and machine learning.
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