By Ashley Portero – Reporter, South Florida Business Journal
Lumu, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in Doral, announced it closed a $7.5 million fundraising round to create jobs and fuel its sales, marketing and research and development initiatives.
The Series A round was led by SoftBank's Opportunity Fund, a $100 million venture that invests in businesses led by Black, Hispanic and other founders and entrepreneurs of color. Venture capital firm Panoramic Ventures also joined in the round, as well as TechOperators General Partner Tom Noonan and Lane Bess, founder of Bass Ventures.
“We believe that Lumu will help businesses change how they operate cybersecurity by putting them in control of the impact of cybercrime in their organizations," said Panoramic Ventures Managing Partner Paul Judge, who also serves on Lumu's board of directors.
The company currently has 35 employees and has 13 open positions it is hiring for.
Lumu offers businesses cloud-based solutions that collect and standardize metadata from across a network. It then uses artificial intelligence to analyze that data and identify points that could be compromised.
Hackers continue to find ways to penetrate corporate cybersecurity defenses despite the billions of dollars spent each year to secure those networks, said Lumu founder and CEO Ricardo Villadiego.
"Lumu’s Continuous Compromise Assessment model flips the conventional security model on its head by assuming that the network is compromised and forces you to prove otherwise," he said.
Villadiego said the backing of investors like SoftBank validates the idea that businesses need to continuously monitor potential cybersecurity compromises to safeguard their networks.
Lumu reports more than 1,300 customers have adopted its cybersecurity model since its launch last February. It was one of the first local companies to receive an investment from SoftBank's $100 million Miami initiative, which funds Miami-area startups or ventures that relocate to the area.