Bringing Calm To Chaos
Cyber security specialist Cytidel has developed a unique method of prioritising the threats facing business and has attracted €1.35m in investment. CEO Matt Conlon tells Deanna O’Connor about the company’s ambitious plans
Cyber security professionals are burning out fast trying to constantly stay ahead of threats, and firefighting issues that arise at any time of day or night. And when every threat is a potential catastrophe, it’s a constant struggle to guess what really is top priority.
“I’ve done a lot of research on security professionals,” says Matt Conlon (31), CEO and co-founder of Cyber Threat Intelligence Delivered, or Cytidel for short. “I think 50% of cyber security people want to change job, and one in four want to leave the industry entirely, and it’s down to burnout. People just can’t keep doing this, especially among security leadership, because they’re fighting a losing battle.”
The widely used Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rates two-thirds of cyber risks as high or critical. Dealing with that number of priorities all at once is “just not feasible”, according to Conlon, “when an engineering team comes to you with an hour of time and a list of 1,000 things that you could fix”.
That’s the problem the Mayo man set out to solve when he came up with the concept for Cytidel. After years in the industry making educated guesses to rank threats, he set about figuring out a smarter, automated way to work. What Cytidel does is help to rank and choose what really is the top 1% of cyber threat priorities to focus on. Conlon says the USP of the platform is that it allows clients, which include An Post and Carne Group, “to get clarity from the noise”.
The start-up says it secured €1.35m last year in a seed round led by Elkstone Ventures and Enterprise Ireland. Allotment filings show Elkstone invested €500,000 share capital, along with €100,000 from Dogpatch Labs, in a €650,000 round
in July 2023. Taxpayers through Enterprise Ireland came on board with €200,000 last December.
“When you’re talking to the board or in the event that a security incident does occur, at least you can show that you have made every effort to prevent that, and you prioritise your resources based on the highest level of risk to your organisation, rather than gut feeling,” Conlon explains.
Automating some of the process with data-driven decision is crucial, although he is quick to point out that while AI is relevant to some supporting roles, it is not up to the job that Cytidel’s team does. “We tried to use it for security, and the responses that were coming back are wrong, and leaving holes.”
He is concerned that people sometimes think they are using AI to fix problems, but don’t necessarily have the expertise to see if they really have. “It would take somebody who knows security architecture to actually understand that,” he adds.
Matt’s career experience spans interning at Accenture, where he “accidentally fell into cyber security” and first met his co-founder Conor Flannery (32), to starting two businesses which taught him some valuable lessons. “How to sell and who to sell to were my two important learnings,” he remarks.
Conlon’s first business venture, in college, was web development to fund his student outgoings. The second idea was an educational platform that he still thinks was a good idea but for various reasons was complicated to scale and grow. A