Publicly listed cybersecurity services provider Tesserent has revealed its Innovation arm has made investments in cybersecurity startups TrustGrid and AttackBound.
This marks Tesserent Innovation’s first step in investing in globally applicable proprietary IP and involves a 25 per cent stake in the start-ups, which is funded through a mix of $1.5 million in cash and $1.5 million in shares at a purchase price of $0.2345 per share.
TrustGrid’s offering involves advanced blockchain technology used to provide digital trust services while AttackBound is an Artificial intelligence (AI)-based cyber threat intelligence platform.
Currently, the applications include privacy-preserved tracking of vaccinations and health records, allowing people and organisations to present health-based proofs on current identification sources with confidentiality such as passports and driver’s licences.
In addition to the equity stake, Tesserent has also inked a strategic partnership to distribute the companies’ solutions through its Cyber 360 offering for Australia and New Zealand customers.
Tesserent co-CEO Julian Challingsworth said Tesserent Innovation was founded to look for innovative and substantial technology startups to invest in for future growth.
TrustGrid has also hired Dmitry Samokhvalov as its new head of engineering and product. Prior to taking up the role with TrustGrid, Samokhvalov worked for Atlassian for two years as its engineering manager and also worked for Amazon as a software engineer in Germany.
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“The launch of the TrustGrid and AttackBound products are being industrialised to SaaS[software-as-a-service]-based technology offerings at a time when citizen privacy across the globe is increasingly paramount,” TrustGrid and AttackBound CEO Santosh Devaraj said.
Recently Tesserent spent about $22 million on purchasing the managed security services business of Secure Logic, of which Devaraj is founder, executive chairman and former CEO.
The publicly listed security player paid A$10.75 million in cash and 42,145,974 of its shares, which are currently valued at $0.27.
Headquartered in Sydney, Secure Logic has three offices across Asia including Singapore, Malaysia and India.
