Bowie-based Trinity Cyber, led by NSA and White House alums, raises $23M

Bowie-based Trinity Cyber emerged from stealth this week, announcing a $23 million investment round and a new hire who most recently led cybersecurity in the White House under President Donald Trump.

The funding round for the company was led by Intel Capital, and included additional institutional investors.

“As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, technology to counter them needs to stay one step ahead,” Wendell Brooks, senior VP of Intel Corporation and president of Intel Capital, said in a statement. “As the threat landscape continues to grow, so does the opportunity to provide cutting edge technology to protect a company’s valuable data.

Like many of the Maryland startups emerging over the last several years, the company draws on expertise in technology and policy gained inside the region’s government institutions. Trinity CEO Steve Ryan is a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency, most recently serving as the deputy director of the NSA’s Threat Operations Center. Marie “Neill” Sciarrone, the company’s president, was a senior executive at BAE Systems, and served in cybersecurity roles at the White House.

With the funding announcement, the company said that former White House homeland security and counterterrorism advisor Tom Bossert is joining as chief strategy officer.

Trinity’s technology, known as proactive threat interference, sits outside of a client’s network on the company’s own hardware. It is designed to detect and neutralize threats before they reach an enterprise. Wired reports that the company’s approach involves altering a threat in a way that frustrates attackers. The company said its offering can be a complement to existing cybersecurity products.

As Ryan put it in a statement accompanying the announcement, “We make the adversary fail, and we feel this strategic support validates the elegance of our solution.”

The company said in a tweet that it plans to hire as a result of the funding.

Trinity Cyber is hiring! Join a team with decades of experience protecting our nation's critical #cybersecurity infrastructure. Learn about our many open positions: https://t.co/wCvn9i1iRU pic.twitter.com/WSrYB7P5uW

— Trinity Cyber (@TrinityCyber) July 30, 2019