SCYTHE raises $3 million for attack simulation platform

SCYTHE says its platform lets enterprises simulate attacks on its own system in order to assess their own readiness.

SCYTHE, an Arlington, Virginia, cybersecurity company, announced Monday that it raised $3 million in seed funding for its automated red-teaming platform.

The company flagship platform allows customers to simulate attack campaigns against their own networks in order to assess their defensive posture.

SCYTHE says that its product uses a catalog of threats to “automatically deploy a combination of threat actor communications and end-point capabilities on the production environment.” Enterprises can customize their own adversarial campaigns then get reports on how well their systems stood up to the threat.

Heading SCYTHE is Bryson Bort, a former U.S. Army officer who has worked in various cybersecurity strategy and research and development at multiple outfits. Bryson is the co-founder of ICS Village, a nonprofit that educates the public about risks to industrial control systems through live simulations. He also founded and is the chairman of GRIMM, a cybersecurity consultancy.

“We’re constantly adding capabilities to our platform and developing new innovations to combat ongoing cyber threats,” Bort said in a press release. “We are excited to bring the potential to disrupt the cybersecurity market with real metrics on security efficacy for business. It’s finally time for industry to get ahead of the threat.”

SCYTHE’s funding round was led by Gula Tech Adventures, a security-focused venture capital firm led by Ron Gula, co-founder of Tenable.

“SCYTHE is a technology every enterprise red team should have so they can prepare the blue team for engagements with cutting-edge offensive teams,” Gula said. “The average dwell time of undetected compromises is currently measured in months and SCYTHE enables the red team to give the blue team something realistic to hunt.”

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Technology

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

• The Collective Cyber Defense letter wrote your next vendor questionnaire

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure