The Internet of Things (IoT) exposes a variety of security challenges that have been prevalent on the Internet since its inception, but exemplified now that hackers can attack entire governmental or commercial systems worth billions of dollars. To prevent these large scale attacks from happening, CIA and DARPA alumni Tim Junio is attempting to build a platform that monitors entire IoT systems—everything from CCTV cameras to servers to cash registers—and alerts the organization if part of their system is unsecure. See Also: Founding a new AT&T for Internet of Things Qadium, which has been building its servers of connected devices for three years, has now raised $20 million in Series A led by New Enterprise Associates’ Scott Sandell. Facebook chairman and investor Peter Thiel led a $6 million seed fund in late 2015. It plans to use the money to build out its server side even further, adding every IoT device available to its platform. With more devices comes more information, which may let Qadium notice vulnerabilities quicker, way before hackers find out the vulnerability exists. Qadium’s Expander is the company’s main program. It lets organizations see their entire connected system, like a search engine for IoT, and also provides analysis of the networks, warning customers of hackable machines, broken firewalls, and other issues that need to be addressed. Expander doesn’t come cheap; Qadium offers it to organizations for $1 million a year. Its main customers are various government agencies, including the U.S. Cyber Command and the U.S. Navy, but it does have private customers, including one large bank based in New York. Providing this vast amount of data to the government might be worrying post-Snowden, but Qadium claims that Expander only works as a defensive tool for organizations, not as a way to hack other governments or organizations. Qadium has also received complaints about potentially accessing consumer devices, like connected TVs and fridges, without permission from the homeowner. The outsourcing of security analysis could be a vital change in the way governments and companies defend against hackers. Instead of entrusting it all to in-house staff that may not be qualified to defend against every single type of hack, Qadium offers a complete platform that prevents hacks before they’re even
US tech start-up, Quadium, has raised $20m in a Series A funding round to build a search engine for Internet of Things (IoT) devices to help users stay ahead of cyber-criminals. The company is working with the University of Washington and other partners on an IoT platform that will be used by companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Watson Health and others. Organisations that subscribe to Quadium's $1m p.a. Expander programme can view their entire connected networks and receive warnings on potential vulnerabilities, unauthorised IT deployments, out of date anti-virus software, and poor-performing firewalls.