HMTA is pleased to announce that we have invested in Hacware, a Dallas-based cybersecurity firm. The $2.3 million invest round was led by Elevate Capital which also created a sidecar SPV for its LPs. We were very impressed by Hacware’s team led by CEO Tiffany Ricks. Hacware trains the employees of their clients how to recognize and respond to phishing attacks.
This investment is consistent with Elevate’s mission of investing with historically underserved founders. Only slight more than 100 companies led by black female founders have raised more than $1 million in venture funding.
Despite the perception that hacking and cyber crime are high tech assaults carried out by evil geniuses, the many attacks are socially engineered low tech efforts. The hackers send employees emails pretending to be co-workers or partners. They ask them to wire money to an account that turns out to be untraceable and offshore. The emails look and sound real, but are purely criminal.
We had direct experience with this through one of our portfolio companies where an accounts payable clerk received an email from a “vendor” changing their payment instructions. The clerk was in a hurry, didn’t follow procedures and wired $200,000 off into space, never to be seen again.
You can read more about Hacware here