Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you did the spin off and InQTel was part of that process, were they aware of the kind of go-to-market that you were going to pursue?

John Benkert: We explained what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it. They were great partners and gave us great feedback.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise from InQTel?

John Benkert: I’m actually not allowed to say how much we raised but it was enough to get us through the first year and a half.

Sramana Mitra: Now you have revenue?

John Benkert: We just started to show some revenue last year. We’re estimating about $8.5 million this year.

Sramana Mitra: This primarily comes from the Seagate federal relationship?

John Benkert: We have other relationships that are unannounced. We work closely with Dell. We work with a large controller manufacturer as well. That’s how we actually met Seagate.

Sramana Mitra: How big is your team?

John Benkert: Right now, we have 25 folks. 98% of them are engineers.

Sramana Mitra: In your engineering operation, how much stuff do you need to do on an ongoing basis? Let’s say you do a deal with Dell and you have the current ransomware issued dealt with. How much of updating of all that needs to happen? Can you do that on a retrofitted way?

John Benkert: We can update our ransomware module. Bad actors are probably going to buy our drives. They’re going to reverse engineer that. We can send you an update for sure.

Sramana Mitra: Your engineering team has to constantly stay on top of that.

John Benkert: Ransomware today does the same thing. Because of where we are, that action happens in a specific way. We are able to see that and stop.

Sramana Mitra: Your hypothesis is that bad actors don’t have a way of getting around that.

John Benkert: That’s the hypothesis for today. We have a good head start. The government lacks that. They’re so far behind in things.

Sramana Mitra: The cyber security industry always has to stay ahead. As a result, it’s one of the most heavily-funded startup segments.

John Benkert: Yes, it’s all about layers. We add another layer. We’re not trying to compete with antivirus. We want to work with them.

Sramana Mitra: You’re operating at a different level. Most are operating at a higher level. We haven’t seen as many of those.

John Benkert: It is so new. It’s hard to explain to folks in the beginning. That’s our biggest challenge.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent
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