With the help of machine learning, DC’s Security Bulldog wants to build better cyber defense

After spending around 20 years in the cybersecurity industry, former marketing consultant Jeff Majka noticed something peculiar about it.

Every morning, cyber teams across the board were spending a few hours aggregating information on what might have gone wrong overnight. And they did this with no easy, centralized place from which to pull data.

“Everybody in cybersecurity has the exact same problem: When they wake up in the morning, they have to figure out what’s broken or compromised, does it affect them and what can they do about that?” Majka told Technical.ly.

So, in January 2021, he created The Security Bulldog to offer cyber teams a streamlined way to track down what was possibly compromised during the night. The company launched its first product in March 2022 and spent the summer onboarding its first customers. The DC startup’s software is powered by machine learning processes, which aggregate and analyze multiple repositories of unstructured content to support federal entities’ properties, like fighter jets.

As someone that’s lived and worked in the region’s cyber ecosystem for over two decades (and seen attendant changes and cycles), Majka said that he’s excited to bring something new to offer something new to DC tech as a whole.

“I’ve been in the cybersecurity space on and off for 20-plus years, and I’ve been in DC pretty much that whole time, so I’ve seen the rise and fall and the rise and fall and the rise of the DC tech scene,” Majka said. “So it’s exciting to start another company here in DC.”

Majka noted that The Security Bulldog, using its natural language processing engine, aggregates all requisite data into a single pane to make things easier to digest. This way, the “heads up display” can individuals like fighter pilots do their manual research as soon and easily as possible.

This fall, the company’s team was accepted into the pre-seed stage of the Newchip accelerator. With the help of the program and its mentors, the team plans to launch a pre-seed round of funding in the near future (the company is currently bootstrapped). The Security Bulldog currently only consists of Majka and his cofounder, but Majka plans to hire and build out the product development and marketing teams once fundraising begins.

Majka said he also plans to build an enterprise version of the company’s product — as requested by its users — in 2023. This will mean more features and integrations with other apps and platforms, and he plans to roll out the updated version in the spring.

As the company grows, Majka hopes it can help build a better cybersecurity world as more and more tech companies come into the market.

“Everybody knows that cybersecurity is front page news and out of control,” Majka said. “There are billions of devices that have been going online with insecure proprietary and open-source software. …So we need to come up with elegant solutions to the problem besides sort of brute forcing the solution.”