Cyber security entrepreneurs from Gloucestershire launch DarkInvader
With the name DarkInvader it is already sounds intriguing, and its business model does not disappoint. Meet the Gloucestershire firm journeying into the dark web, locating stolen data to protect people and businesses from further damage.
The team behind award-winning cyber security consultancy, Pentest People, based at Hub8 Cheltenham, has launched a new business that provides organisations with early warnings of data breaches.
DarkInvader will continuously trawl the dark web and hacker forums for caches of stolen data associated with a user’s organisation, allowing then to respond to cyber breaches more quickly and prevent further damage.
The dramatically named firm was co-founded by serial entrepreneurs, Andrew Mason and Robin Hill, along with technical director, Gavin Watson and sales director, Anthony Harvey – and it has already won ‘a number of public sector contracts’.
Mason said: ‘Organisations often don’t realise they’ve been hacked until we tell them that their data is being offered for sale on forums and secret websites that are not easily accessible to the general public.
‘Our combination of technology and human research allows us to identify threats earlier than standard dark web automation tools.’
The firm’s software scans hundreds of thousands of illicit online marketplaces and millions of dark web pages to identify key pieces of information that indicate that an organisation’s stores of information like payment card data, passport numbers, healthcare records and other sensitive personally identifiable data have been compromised.
Its cyber security researchers also manually monitor hacker forums for conversations indicating new exploits.
When a breach is confirmed, DarkInvader provides the affected organisation with a risk report on the severity, along with remediation advice to help the company to identify and block the source of the leak to prevent escalation.
DarkInvader is the third company co-founded by Anthony Harvey and Gavin Watson and the sixth business launched by Andrew Mason and Robin Hill who employ more than a hundred and fifty people in Leeds and Cheltenham.
Their fast-growth companies have well-established apprentice schemes and graduate recruitment programmes, with strong links to local schools and universities.
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