IronNet Cybersecurity (IronNet), a cybersecurity specialist backed by private equity investor C5 Capital, is to merge with LGL Systems Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
The transaction will see IronNet list on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol IRNT.
IronNet merges industry-leading cybersecurity products with expert service to create a platform designed to deliver the most advanced, real-time cyber defense globally, protecting both private and public sectors. Bringing together some of the best minds in cybersecurity from industry, government and academia, IronNet was created to more effectively defend enterprises, sectors and nations against highly organised cyber adversaries and increasingly sophisticated attacks that traditional security tools are challenged to detect. IronNet’s Collective Defense platform, which features proprietary and patented technology, detects cyber anomalies and shares anonymised threat data in real time within a secure ecosystem. This provides all Collective Defense members with a previously unachievable level of visibility into potential incoming threats.
“Today marks an important milestone as we work to advance IronNet’s ability to defend enterprises, sectors and nations against highly organised cyber adversaries and increasingly sophisticated attacks. We face the beginning of a digital arms race in which adversaries are using cybersecurity attacks as a tool to wreak havoc, including destruction, intelligence-gathering, and extortion – ultimately presenting an existential economic threat to the public and private sectors. Compounding this problem, organisations frequently must defend themselves, often with limited resources, against well-funded nation state groups who plan, code and attack in teams over long periods of time,” says GEN (Ret) Keith Alexander, Chairman of the Board, Founder and Co-CEO of IronNet.
“Cybersecurity attacks are increasing in volume and are costing global industries billions of dollars annually, as evidenced by the recent global attacks via SolarWinds and Microsoft software. Sophisticated threat actors routinely target private companies’ networks with increasingly swift and complex tactics. Supply chain and zero-day exploits are now part of the everyday business lexicon, and ransomware attacks are targeting life safety critical infrastructure. We believe we can solve that problem with a differentiated solution that leverages AI-driven behavioural analytics to detect attacks and shares that threat data among our customers in real time so they can take action more quickly,” adds William Welch, Co-CEO of IronNet.
“IronNet is unparalleled in its approach to cybersecurity, providing best in class technology applications, critical data, and an experienced management team,” says Robert LaPenta, Co- CEO of LGL Systems Acquisition Corp. “As it stands today, current methods of cyber information sharing, analysis, and collective action are simply too manual and too slow to be effective. Our LGL team is very excited to partner with General (Ret) Alexander, the longest-serving head of the NSA and founder of US Cyber Command, in helping steward his corporate vision to the New York Stock Exchange. We believe this merger will make a real difference in helping IronNet protect our fellow citizens from accelerating aggression by an invisible enemy intent on hurting our well-being.”
IronNet’s Collective Defense Platform consists of IronDefense and IronDome. IronDefense is an advanced Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution that provides behaviour-based and AI-driven analytics at the network level to detect anomalous activity at individual enterprises and prioritise the highest threats in a company’s network. The IronDome solution then provides a crowdsource-like environment in which the IronDefense findings from an individual company are automatically and anonymously shared at machine network speed and cloud scale within the group of related entities (portfolio companies, supply chains, industries, or nations) for correlation and further analysis. This real-time visibility to the threat landscape delivers timely, actionable, and contextual insights to the attacks targeting an enterprise and provides early warning to all members.
In addition, IronNet’s professional cybersecurity services, are led by security professionals and threat researchers who have real-world experience with nation-state cyber operations. These customer engagements deliver end-to-end security posture evaluations that enable a customer’s security team to exercise their processes and technologies against a sophisticated but benign adversary, identify new and novel threats in their networks, and discover potential gaps.
IronNet believes that Collective Defense is the future of cybersecurity and takes threat intelligence sharing to an operational level. This one-of-a-kind platform represents a radically different approach to cybersecurity, designed to break down the silos that have made organizations around the world vulnerable to destructive cyberattacks.
