A burgeoning concentration of cybersecurity companies and plenty of potential corporate customers has led a Swiss security software maker to establish its North American headquarters in Newport Beach.
Hacknowledge’s presence at 1201 Dove St. marks the first global expansion for privately held parent Hacknowledge SA, which was established about three years ago.
The subsidiary will target customers with revenue between $100 million and $700 million—a rather sweet spot on Orange County’s corporate map, which is dotted with hundreds of companies that fit the bill.
“The Orange County area, we feel there is a lot of companies and a lot of innovation going on down there,” said co-founder and Pasadena resident Jamie Lohrungruang, who received his MBA from the University of Southern California. “There are a ton of products out there in the marketplace, and most companies don’t know what to do with them.”
Hacknowledge provides managed security monitoring services through its software and call centers, including threat detection and analysis. Once a credible threat is confirmed, its engineering team solves the problem.
It opened the Newport Beach office with six employees and plans to build an operations center here as it seeks its first U.S. customers in government, healthcare, sports, oil and gas, financial services, luxury products, insurance and gaming, among other sectors.
“We’ve tested the market enough in Europe,” Lohrungruang said. “It’s a lot more competitive in the U.S.”
Hacknowledge has held preliminary discussions on a partnership with Irvine-based security software maker Cylance Inc., one of OC’s most closely watched technology companies.
The Business Journal reported last month that Cylance is entering the consumer market after building a strong base of enterprise customers that helped it pass $81 million in revenue in the 12 months through June 2016, up a whopping 1,996% from two years earlier.
The leap won it the top spot among companies with between $10 million and $100 million in annual sales on the Business Journal’s fastest-growing private companies list last year. Forbes recently ranked Cylance No. 17 among the top 100 cloud companies in the U.S., based on sales growth and market share. It’s raised $177 million since its 2012 inception and has nearly 370 local employees.
Hacknowledge is the latest newcomer to OC’s growing cybersecurity hub, joining other newer entrants, such as Obsidian Security at Newport Center and Aliso Viejo-based Veracity Industrial Networks.Â
Obsidian is developing a product suite that fuses security, artificial intelligence and hybrid-cloud technology, while Veracity has lined up pilot customers to upgrade switch infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of securing the U.S. electric power grid and other large, government and industrial networks.
OC, and particularly Irvine, is home to several other emerging and established players in the industry, including CrowdStrike Inc., SecureAuth Corp. and Susteen Inc., as well as the Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute at the University of California-Irvine.
Hacknowledge SA has about 40 customers in Europe and takes in less than $10 million in annual revenue.
