December Cyber Intelligence Review
November was characterized by important government policy events and a strong showing by Big Data in Venture Capital fundings. On the government side, President Obama signed Policy Directive 20, a classified order that enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on government and private computer networks.
The Navy awarded a $98.7 million SPAWAR contract, procuring support that will enable U.S. forces to maneuver in the cyber domain, while paying special attention to protect U.S. critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, the South Carolina government raced to secure its computer networks in response to a high-profile hack that compromised the Social Security numbers of 3.8 million people and tax information from nearly 657,000 businesses.
On the M&A front, KeyW Corporation added to its cybersecurity offerings after acquiring Rsignia, Inc., a provider of cyber solutions that enable detection, mitigation, countermeasures, and forensics. Cisco was active in the cloud sector with its acquisitions of Meraki, Inc., a provider of on-premise networking solutions that can be centrally managed from the cloud, and Cloupia, Inc., a provider of cloud automation and management software solutions to small, medium, and large enterprises. Intelligent Software Solutions furthered its Big Data strategy with its acquisition of Xpect, LLC, a provider of software to Federal, state, and local governments that assist in identifying, collating, analyzing, visualizing and exploiting various types of information. Most notably, Big Data saw a surge in Venture Capital funding activity, comprising 16 of the last 19 cyber funding rounds tracked.
