Disappointed with the cybersecurity solutions on offer, Guy Caspi, Nadav Maman and Eli David (PhD) decided to join forces in the pursuit against the most sophisticated attacks. Following years spent in elite units of the Israeli Defense Forces, all three possess an extensive background in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and deep learning.
This is how Deep Instinct, the world’s first and only deep learning cybersecurity company began in 2015. Using deep learning they developed an artificial neural network brain, which instinctively identifies attacks with the highest rate of detections and minimal false positives.
It was an innovative approach, one that had never been done, but one that would prove to be wildly successful.
“Our company’s core cybersecurity value proposition is centered around cyber threat prevention,” a spokesperson at the company told The Software Report. “At Deep Instinct part of our mission is to create a shift in mindset that prevention is possible.” In fact, the company is so confident in its technology, it guarantees that it will help enterprises completely avoid cyber attacks. “This is critical in a threat landscape, where real time is too late.”
The founder's military background comes through loud and clear in their ethos, but for companies wanting to avoid the embarrassment and tragedy cyber attacks bring, it’s a welcome warranty.
Its patented artificial brain module is made up of complex neural networks which automatically predict and identify whether a file is malicious. “The critical advantage of our technology, over AV solutions is that it is able to recognize both known and unknown threats,” they add. “Regardless of what new malware is created, the Deep Instinct artificial brain can detect and prevent a large range of threats in milliseconds.”
Free from the pitfalls of human biases, knowledge, and error Deep Instinct sets itself apart by analyzing 100% of available raw data. In comparison human experts can only identify 2% to 3% of data.
The deep neural network brain is retrained twice a year, allowing it to learn about new malware and attack vendors in the threat landscape. “The algorithm is trained on malware samples sourced from four different sources; public repositories, darknet, homegrown malware and malware mutations. This predictive learning has served to be highly effective, with the brain able to detect new malware, months after a previous training.”
Despite the founder's backgrounds in the armed forces, Deep Instinct prides itself on its fun and social workplace culture. From weekly themed happy hours to chess tournaments and afterwork yoga classes, the company values employee happiness and takes employee retention seriously. The company also offers competitive compensation and benefits packages.
Since announcing it had raised $43 million in a Series C funding round, led by Millennium New Horizons and Unbound, Deep Instinct hopes to accelerate sales and marketing in North America. It also looks to support the expansion of its business operations in Japan and EMEA, while almost doubling its 150-person workforce with 100 new employees in the near future. This investment brings the company's total funding to $100 million.
Notably, the cybersecurity firm has grown rapidly achieving an over 400% increase in annual recurring revenue and growing its customer base by 300% in 2019.
As far as the future is concerned, it should come as no surprise that Deep Instinct looks "to take the IPO track,” though they remain tight lipped as to when that would be.
