Open source security firm Lexumo closes $4.89M seed funding

Lexumo, that indexes all of the open source code in the world, and checks for security vulnerabilities in it on the cloud, has landed with a $4.89 million seed round funding from Accomplice, .406 Ventures, and parent company — Draper Labs, an MIT-based not-for-profit research organization. The funding will be used The start-up said it will use the new funding to continue developing and commercializing its platform while adding more people to its sales and marketing teams. The Cambridge, Massachusetts based company, quotes unnamed industry analysts, as stating in an official release that “open source software (OSS) is now used for mission-critical IT by 95 percent of all mainstream IT organizations, as well as in 85 percent of all commercial software packages.” Companies can submit their acquired open source code to the Lexumo’s cloud-based security service, which checks for any known security vulnerabilities. Subsequently, the code is monitored for any updates, and alerts the subscribers. Lexumo, in fact provides custom patches for security vulnerabilities, if the code-developer is late on it. Security vulnerabilities can lead to theft of sensitive data, failure of critical systems, and brand damage. The threat magnifies when the code is used in “connected devices” and “embedded systems”. That means basically anything with a chip in it like, consumer electronics, medical devices, network equipment, and factory automation systems. “Security for the Internet of Things has been largely overlooked and, given the pace of IoT deployments, it presents a massive risk to technology developers, businesses and consumers,” said Maria Cirino, Managing Partner at .406 Ventures.

“Recent research cites that security solutions for IoT are at least two years away, but Lexumo has the right technology and business model to tackle this problem today.”

According to the company, there were approximately 52 million downloads in 2014, of vulnerable components from the Central Repository, which supplies widely-used shareable components developed by open source organizations such as The Apache Software Foundation, Atlassian, RedHat (JBoss), and Oracle (Java). When these vulnerable components are integrated into a company’s software, their products and applications are at risk. Kaigham J Gabriel, President and CEO of Draper, added, “The IoT is vulnerable because humans are fallible. The Lexumo team applied automated big data analysis to eliminate open-source security vulnerabilities across all sectors of critical national infrastructure and commercial enterprises. The team built the first implementation of the initial concept at Draper, and we are thrilled to spin out Lexumo.” Lexumo’s analytics technology was originally developed at Draper Labs five years ago with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funding. DARPA is a US Department of Defense agency, responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. For the record, Gabriel is former acting director of DARPA.

Lexumo is led by Draper veterans and cyber security experts, Brad Gaynor, Nathan Shnidman. They developed the company’s underlying technology at Draper, and the company was incubated there, with Draper getting an equity stake for its early investment. Gaynor, who besides being the co-founder of Lexumo, is the CEO too, said, “The funding is a validation of our scalable, cloud-based approach to identifying and eliminating open source vulnerabilities in a new and innovative way.” The company currently has four employees and is looking to build a 15-member team by the end of this year. It has openings currently for Security Analytics Engineer, Data Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and SaaS Platform Lead.