As an example of the speed with which we are applying AI to difficult use cases in Cybersecurity, consider Vicarius, which just banked $30M in VC for its AI-powered vulnerability detection tools

This investment highlights the growing interest and confidence in AI’s capabilities to enhance cybersecurity measures.

The Rise of AI-Powered Cybersecurity Tools

The concept of “copilots” in cybersecurity, powered by generative AI, is gaining traction. Major players like Microsoft and Google are already on board with this trend, and so is Vicarius. Recently, Vicarius introduced a text-generating AI tool named vuln_GPT, designed to assist in creating scripts for detecting and remediating system breaches. This innovative tool underlines the potential of AI in revolutionizing cybersecurity practices.

Vicarius’ Market Impact                           

Vicarius, co-founded by Michael Assraf, Yossi Ze’evi, and Roi Cohen, has shown remarkable progress. According to Assraf, the company’s growth is evidenced by a 5x increase in year-over-year growth and an expanding customer base that now includes over 400 brands like PepsiCo, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Equinix. This significant market impact and consistent growth trajectory have undoubtedly contributed to capturing the interest of investors.

Substantial Funding and Future Plans

This VC round, led by Bright Pixel Capital and supported by AllegisCyber Capital, AlleyCorp, and Strait Capital, significantly increased Vicarius’ valuation. The funding, totaling approximately $56.7 million to date, is earmarked for product development and team expansion.

Assraf’s vision for Vicarius includes automating discovery, prioritization, and remediation tasks, easing the workload of security and IT teams.

Foundational Concept and Current Capabilities

The idea behind Vicarius stemmed from recognizing a pattern in cyberattacks, where attackers often reuse certain “building blocks,” specifically third-party and operating system APIs. Vicarius’ approach involves creating an intelligent permission manager for these system-level APIs. Today, Vicarius offers services that analyze apps for vulnerabilities and provide alerts. Additionally, they offer “in-memory protection” for apps when traditional patches are unavailable, an approach that Assraf claims secures apps effectively.

Community Engagement and AI Validation

Vicarius fosters a community of security vulnerability researchers, encouraging the sharing of remediation and detection scripts. Researchers are rewarded with a virtual currency, creating a dynamic ecosystem for collaboration and innovation. Moreover, Vicarius uses the community-generated data to train vuln_GPT. Assraf emphasizes that all AI-generated scripts undergo a validation process before deployment to customers, ensuring reliability and effectiveness.

Ambitions and Expansion Plans

Looking ahead, Vicarius has ambitious goals. They plan to offer security researchers the ability to use their earned currency for various products, launch educational courses, and integrate with popular ticketing platforms like ServiceNow and Jira. Additionally, Vicarius aims to expand into new markets, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, while strengthening its presence in existing markets like North America and Europe.

Addressing the Challenges in Vulnerability Management

Assraf highlights a significant challenge in the cybersecurity field: the complexity of vulnerability management. Many enterprises struggle with deploying effective vulnerability management processes due to the overwhelming number of tools and alerts, which burdens security teams. Vicarius aims to simplify and streamline this process by offering a consolidated platform that personalizes and scales vulnerability remediation, providing a comprehensive solution to this pervasive challenge.

With advances in threat detection and vulnerability management like these and the paradigm shift from MDR and EDX to ITDR, we are leveraging AI rapidly and getting a lot further left of bang than we had been able to in the past. This is evidence of real progress.