Arlington cybersecurity firm spins out SCYTHE, launches CROSSBOW

Arlington, Va., cybersecurity services firm GRIMM is spinning out a product-focused startup.

This week, the firm announced that GRIMM founder Bryson Bort has been named as the CEO of SCYTHE. In turn, SCYTHE has launched a new cybersecurity product called CROSSBOW. The platform assists enterprises in assessing their security posture.

Both GRIMM and SCYTHE will help each other with research and development, yet they are separate companies. SCYTHE is focusing on the product side and GRIMM is working on cybersecurity consulting and engineering services.

CROSSBOW is aimed at helping Chief Information Officers and Chief Information Security Officers of large organizations to help them identify the risks to their organizations and assess the performance of their security employees.

“Over time, we observed a number of consistent pain points for our customers and a gap in the market. We’ve built a product that allows you to assess all those capabilities on your production environment. It’s not a simulation. It’s not a virtual environment. It’s your real-world place; and it’s your real-world people,” Bort said.

The threat landscape for enterprise level organizations is huge, as the recent Equifax data breach has reminded the public-at-large. Calls for increased security measures means that there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done to help enterprises to protect their data.

“CROSSBOW realizes the risk profile of the company is no longer just itself; it’s also the vendors and the partners, because the enterprise extends to them. And with CROSSBOW you can also assess them and what they do with respect to your risk profile,” said Bort, in conversation with Technical.ly DC.

Bryson Bort (Courtesy photo)

The company is looking to begin a funding round in the coming months. The product arrives amid growth in the market. Analysts projected cybersecurity spending would hit $86.4 billion this year, according to Gartner, with others who focus on the industry predicting the market to exceed $1 trillion by 2021.

Over his tenure as CEO with GRIMM, Bort, a former Army Officer, has positioned himself as an expert on everything from car hacking to power grid insecurity. He’s questioned whether or not zero-trust networks are worthwhile, and the vulnerabilities underlying devices connected to the “Internet of Things.”

Brian DeMuth has been named as the new CEO for GRIMM and Bort will step into the role of Chairman.