Lebanon-based cybersecurity company Myki has reportedly raised $4m, taking its total investment to date to $5.2m.
The Series A round was led by returning investors BECO Capital, a Dubai-based venture capital firm, along with Beirut-based LEAP Ventures and B&Y Venture Partners according to Forbes Middle East.
Founded in 2015, Myki is a mobile application that allows users to securely store and manage passwords and sensitive information such as credit cards, government IDs and secure notes. It offers both consumer and enterprise identity management solutions, allowing users to store sensitive information offline and away from the cloud. Instead, it relies on point to point military grade encryption to securely push passwords from phone to computer, with users able to login into all accounts with their fingerprint.
The company also claims to manage a user’s two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA), a method of confirming a user’s claimed identity by utilising a combination of two different components.
The traditional way of receiving these 2FA codes is either via SMS which is slow and insecure or via an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator according to the company. While the latter is more secure than the former, it is extremely inconvenient due to the fact that you are required to unlock your phone, open the authenticator app and type the 6 digit 2FA code into your browser every time you want to login. To help, Myki claims to securely store a user’s 2FA secrets alongside their passwords, auto-filling 2FA tokens when logging in and therefore simplifying the process.
A recent study by RegTech Analyst found that Cybersecurity investments declined in Q1 2018 as later-stage deals dried up. Total investment in Q1 2018 reached just $725.8m, a fall of 47.7% from the previous quarter. However, compared to the same quarter in 2017, total funding increased by 27%. The drop in investment in Q1 2018 can be attributed to a lack of later-stage deals valued above $100m.
The $725.8m invested in Q1 2018 equates to just 15.7% of last year’s total funding. Thus, if investment continues at this pace, it is not projected to surpass 2017’s total. However, investment was similarly slow at the beginning of 2017 and gained momentum later in the year.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
