20 Things You Didn’t Know About Darktrace
The world is moving in a direction of reliance on technology. New forms are evolving and improvements are being made to the products and services offered by companies specializing in the development of innovative products and services to automate, streamline and improve with the flow of nearly every type of industry. This creates the need for enhanced cybersecurity as the tech systems in use in a digital world contain sensitive data and information. It makes everyone involved vulnerable to attack by cybercriminals. Darktrace is an Artificial Intelligence company that focuses its mission on providing cyber defense. It is a versatile tech startup that grew from a concept discussed by colleagues and British Intelligence agencies that has become a giant and leader in the industry. This is a company that investors as well as companies dealing with sensitive data have a keen interest in following. Here are 20 things you didn’t know bout Darktrace you might find intriguing.
1. Darktrace is a British company
Darktrace is a British-based AI company that develops and markets products for cyber defense. It was established in 2013 in Cambridge, England. The company has been in operation for 8 years and has since expanded its operations throughout the world. According to Wikipedia, it has become one of the leaders in AI-based cyber defense. Darktrace continues to house its main headquarters in Cambridge with a United States office established in San Frncisco, California.
2. Darktrace began as an academic/government collaboration
Darktrace, unlike many other large companies, does not have a single founder. It evolved as the result of a collaboration between Cambridge University mathematicians and British Intelligence agencies. The parties involved in its development saw the need to take action to protect the various digital environments in the country as a matter of national security as well as protection of the individuals living in the country.
3. Darktrace provides versatile and effective products
The AI-powered technology product offered by Darktrace is called the Enterprise Immune System technology. It relies on a combination of unsupervised machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect cyber threats autonomously and to take action against them. it is designed to protect all diverse digital environments including industrial control systems, Internet of Things, virtual, and cloud environments.
4. Darktrace launched a new business unit in 2017
In November of 2017, Darktrace Industrial was launched as a new business unit. The purpose of the unit is to fight threats in SCADA and industrial networks. Cyber threats and latent vulnerabilities in the IT and OT environments are detected through the specifically developed AI technology that powers Darktrace Industrial. The complex technology works via machine learning across a range of OT environments, covering various technologies and deployment types from older systems to the newer and more modern distributed sensors including the Industrial Internet of Things.
5. Darktrace has expanded across the world
Darktrace provides cyber defense products and technology in 44 different countries throughout the 5 continents of the world. Since it was established in 2013, Darktrace has been deployed over 9,000 times. The company maintains a workforce of more than 1,600 employees distributed throughout various locations around the globe, according to its LinkedIn page.
6. Darktrace is classified into four industries
According to Crunchbase, Darktrace is a technology company that falls under four major classifications or industries. While its main classification is a cybersecurity company, it is weighted by versatility and multiple technologies that qualify it for inclusion in different categories. It is also considered to be an Information Technology startup, a Machine Learning business, and an Artificial Intelligence development firm. Darktace is a wonderfully complex company that uses cutting edge technology to power its products that work seamlessly behind the scenes to deliver high on cyberprotection defense systems.
7. Darktrace was established by a group of co-founders
The people involved in the development of Darktace come from academic mathematical and intelligence backgrounds. Four notable professionals put together their ideas for developing a strong cybersecurity defensive system. The list of founders for Darktrace includes Dave Palmer, Emily Orton, Jack Stockdale, Nicole Eagan, and Poppy Gustafsson.
8. Darktrace technology is inspired by the human immune system
Remarkably, the functions of the human body have served as the inspiration for eh development of Darktrace’s self-learning artificial intelligence model. Just as the human immune system is biologically programmed to seek out and detect foreign pathogens and threats, the programming of Darktrace cybersecurity systems functions in the same manner. Its role is to detect and vanquish all threats to security, just like the human body does, only with more efficiency.
9. The cyber protection Darktrace offers is multifunctional
We were impressed with the capacity of Darktrace’s cyber protection system. We learned that it deploys every 3 seconds with artificial intelligence-powered technology that puts up a fight against all cyber-threats, and prevents them from causing damage. Darktrace defends networks, industrial systems, IoT, email, and cloud from insider threats, IoT compromises, industrial espionage, zero-day malware, supply chain risk, data loss, and long-term infrastructure. It is currently used by more than 3,500 organizations.
10. Darktrace is a late-stage venture capital-backed company
Darktrace is a late-stage venture capital-backed company that raised $230.5 million in 8 venture capital funding rounds. The last rounding round closed on September 26, 2018, with a round of Series E funding. The company was financially backed by 11 investors including Vitruvian Partners, Future Fifty, Insight Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Summit Partners, Invoke Capital Partners, Talis Capital Partners, and 3 others.
11. You can find Darktrace shares on the stock market
Investors are happy to know that Darktrace recently went public. The company is listed under the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DARK. The IPO was on April 30, 2021, and opened with £250.00 per share for its stock price. This is good news for investors that have an interest in getting in on the ground floor of stock in the company which has been offered for sale, hold, or trade for less than two weeks. Although the shares opened on a high note, the outlook for Darktrace to perform exceptionally high on the market is sunny. It’s at a minimum a stock worth keeping your eye on if you’re interested in diversification of your investment portfolio.
12. Darktrace is a unicorn company
Darktrace has become one of the leading companies in cyber defense over the past 8 years, since its inception. It has continued to develop new measures using cutting-edge technology to provide the highest level of defense for some of the largest enterprises on the planet. It has grown and expanded in size and profitability. The company has made it to the highly desired unicorn status that requires a valuation of at least $1 billion or more. Its last known valuation as of September of 2018 was $1.65 billion. It is now among the elite group of companies to reach this level of success.
13. Darktrace has a large team of executive members
Darktrace is headed by a team of 39 executives. The group is made up of Poppy Gustafsson, a co-founder and CEO, Jack Stockdale, co-founder and CTO, Eloy Avila, Americas CTO, Emily Orton, co-founder, and chief marketing officer, Gary Szukalski, chief channel management officer, Sanjay Aurora, managing director of Asia Pacific, Al Martin is the vice president of global presales and technical operations, and Sara Vukau is the account executive and cybersecurity executive. This is the core executive team that also includes 31 other heads, not listed here.
14. Darktrace has a small board of directors
The board of Darktrace is composed of just three members. These members provide advisement for the strategic planning and operation of the firm. Hussein Kanji is a partner at Hoxton Ventures who sits on 3 other boards and holds the position of Board Observer for Darktrace. Mark Hatfield became a Darktrace board member in 2016. He is currently involved in 6 board and advisor roles and is the co-founder and general partner of TenEleven Ventures. Han Sikkens joined the Darktrace board in 2015. He currently serves in two board and advisory roles. Mr. Sikkens is the managing director and head of Summit Partners Europe. Each of the three board members brings years of professional experience and expertise to the table.
15. Darktrace operates via a complex array of technology
The secret to the success of Darktrace’s strong cyber protection is in the use of complicated technologies including machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence. Each of these technologies has been developed in different variations to achieve the precision and vigilant monitoring necessary to detect cyber threats. Darktrace uses a total of 32 different technologies that are distributed through 16 technology products and services. This includes jQuery, Google Analytics, HTML5, Viewport Meta, iPhone/Mobile Compatible, SPF, and several others.
16. Darktrace is gaining new clients at a rapid pace
The monthly visit growth for Darktrace averages 12.75 percent in its growth rate per 30 day period. The website for Darktrace gets an average of 104,540 monthly visits to the website. The most frequently visited site is for the United States, followed y the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, France, and Italy. More than half of the website visits are made to the US-based website.
17. Darktrace is a world leader in autonomous CyberAI
According to the company’s website, Darktrace offers the leading autonomous cyber defense platform in the world currently. Its Darktrace Immune System is the leader and is an award-winning CyberAI system. It is a sophisticated system that stays one jump ahead of the sophistication of modern cybercriminals through a system of detection, investigation, and responses to cyber threats that blankets the entire system, finding them wherever they strike and arresting the dangers in real-time.
18. Darktrace has identified a new cybersecurity firm
Part of the overwhelming success of Darktrace is its innovation in identifying a new kind of cybersecurity. It is moving the entire industry ahead of previous defense models. The secret to its success is through the application of advanced machine learning methods which are applied to a novel software application. One of the realities of Darktrace’s status is that there are no other companies that come close to competing with its innovative cyber defense products. It’s endorsed by Dr. Andrew Herbert, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, as such.
19. Darktrace is a system that reduces the human burden through automation
Businesses are discovering that the use of Darktrace protection systems helps by reducing the amount of manpower that is required to provide security for IT systems. The autonomous system is designed to use intuitive and dedicated artificial intelligence to perform the necessary functions to free up multiple members of IT teams. The streamlining of these processes allows IT professionals to spend more hours per week on other useful tasks. In the long run, it helps to save time and money without the need to focus on traditional email security tools.
20. Darktrace shares climbed by 40% despite controversy
According to the UK Times, Darktrace shares shot up at price by 40 percent despite a recent controversy generated by one of its software developers. The huge controversy was created when Mike Lynch, an early backer, and developer of the Autonomy, a software developer was accused of misrepresenting the accounts of the former FTSE 100 company. He is currently fighting extradition to the United States to answer the accusations of fraud. Although this initially created concerns among investors, Darktrace offered a steep discount on its shares and the result was a jump of over 40 percent with shares offered at 250. This was bad timing for Darktrace which recently went public, but from all appearances, investors are willing to overlook the involvement that Lynch has had with Darktrace and believe in the company’s good standing and ability to move forward when the dust has settled on the case.
