April the 13th, 2023 – The impressive Croatian ReversingLabs software company is aiming for the very prestigious unicorn status with its brand new product. It seems they have a very good chance of success.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, during these times when we do just about everything via the Internet – we communicate, pay for things, shop, work, study, and even count our steps using the web – the security of our data and software has never been more important, and it’s also never been less secure.
”There are countless channels for attack, from messages, emails, links and documents we open, to the basic pages we browse. The methods these hackers and attacks use are constantly developing and improving,” Igor Lasic, senior vice president for technology of the Croatian ReversingLabs software company explained. ReversingLabs otherwise specialises precisely in cyber security, and Lasic continued by noting that artificial intelligence (AI) will be another component that will further complicate the fight between the good and bad online.
For example, as he he explained, in the software supply chain, the bad guys are constantly looking for weaknesses, and the good guys are constantly looking for ways to eliminate them. “It’s a dead race, although users today are still in a slightly better situation than they were ten years ago,” said Lasic.
It’s specifically in this area – the software supply chain – that the Croatian ReversingLabs company, with offices in Zagreb and across the pond in Boston, deals with. ReversingLabs is currently seeking an opportunity to achieve the goal they are striving for the most – to become a unicorn, that is, a company worth a billion US dollars. They’re currently in the phase, he said, of starting to conquer the market with a brand new product.
The company founded by Mario Vuksan and Tomislav Pericin started its operations in Zagreb fourteen years ago with a focus primarily placed on cyber security. This focus is based on previous work experience in the American company Bit9, which was later renamed to Carbon Black. They have focused on developing technology to detect and fight against malicious software (malware), and today they have the best static analysis of software in the entire world that doesn’t require any sort of access to the source code.
A turning point in the development of the Croatian ReversingLabs company was the attack by the Russian secret services on the American software company SolarWinds when there was a breach in the networks of tens of thousands of American companies and government agencies. Then, by chance, ReversingLabs turned out to be the only technology option possible for detecting advanced software supply chain attacks.
“Most of the components of today’s software, about 80% of them, come from open sources, that is, the Internet. The primary tactic of the attackers is to get to open sources and insert their components into parts of the software, which the users then completely unconsciously incorporate into their own software,” explained Lasic.
As terrifying as that sounds, there are more and more such incidents taking place, and heavily infected software packages are discovered on a weekly basis, with several major incidents occurring annually.
The biggest and most sophisticated such attack so far was the aforementioned “SolarWinds” attack, and nowdays we’re witnessing another big attack – the one through the 3CX application for making calls over the Internet.
”Our task is to control open source repositories on a daily basis, and even more often, with the aim of detecting infected software components and preventing such incidents from taking place,” Lasic pointed out. The quality of their solution was also quickly recognised by investors, and the Croatian ReversingLabs company received a second round of investment in the amount of 56 million US dollars back in 2021, while in total they have received 81 million dollars of investment to date, which makes them one of the most potent domestic startups that could take the title of the third Croatian unicorn.
According to Lasic, the latest investment was led by the private equity fund Crosspoint Capital, which is interesting for several reasons. It is led by some of the giants of the technology industry in the modern day, and one of the partners in the fund is Greg Clark, a big name in the world of cyber security who managed Symantec, a well-known American software giant, for several years.
“They recognised the potential of the technology that ReversingLabs has developed and believe that we can become a unicorn. They’re also specific in that they provide us with both tactical and strategic assistance,” says ReversingLabs’ senior vice president for technology. ReversingLabs will really need that help, because the company is in the phase when it has to market its new product, and on the insanely competitive American market, that is certainly not easy, even with the best possible product.
“Sales and marketing must now capitalise on the technical excellence that we’ve developed and ensure our recognition on that market,” emphasised Lasic, who replaced Zagreb with Boston during his studies and “stayed” there for a full 30 years. The majority of that investment was invested in the development of a product intended to provide security in the software procurement chain and to strengthen the team in charge of sales and marketing.
They increased that department in their American office located in Cambridge near Boston by about five times, and the number of people in Zagreb, who are engaged in engineering work, research and product development, by about 40. Today they have a total of more than 250 employees, and more than 170 of those people are based here in Zagreb. A significant spring in their step in terms of the conquest of the US market will surely be the fact that the analytical company Forrester included them in their overview of the most complete solutions of SCA suppliers (software composition analysis) for the year 2023.
This is important, according to Lasic, because based on that list, numerous companies decide which and whose solution they will implement. Their goal is to conquer the American market, where they currently generate 90 percent of their revenue with their first product, and those figures have been growing significantly for the past two years now. Europe is important to them, but it is a smaller market, and the general level of awareness of cyber security, as well as the budgets dedicated to it, are much lower.
Despite the difficult economic situation we all continue to find ourselves in, the Croatian ReversingLabs company isn’t too concerned about the turbulence and crisis unfolding in the technology sector, which is currently in full swing in the USA and around the world.
“This is the best time to start something. Hard times either bring out the best in you or destroy you. In this situation, you have to focus all your energy on finding the best and optimal ways to make money,” said Lasic, who led the development of as many as six startups across the pond in America before coming to ReversingLabs. He has been at ReversingLabs for eight years now, and what keeps him going is the founder’s ambition and new projects, of which there is no shortage.
“The company is constantly growing, so my function changes accordingly, which is a big challenge for me. That makes me happy and it’s really fulfilling. The worst thing is when the company stagnates because it’s difficult to maintain the work ethic in such situations,” concluded Lasic.
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