Synack is an American technology company based in
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area of Northern California, approximately south of San Francisco and northwest of San Jose, California, San Jose. The city's population was 84,292 accor ...
, United States.
The company uses a software-as-a-service platform to connect customers with freelance security researchers who conduct penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities.
Overview
Established in 2013 by former
NSA agents Jay Kaplan and Mark Kuhr, Synack retains a network of security analysts, or
white-hat hackers, in over 80 countries to identify software security issues, including flaws in generative artificial intelligence systems.
The company calls its approach “Penetration Testing as a Service,” a model similar to running bug bounty programs with added platform-based features like control of testing traffic.
Synack customers include the Department of Health and Human Services, the
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...
, other government agencies and businesses in retail, finance, healthcare and manufacturing.
The company has also conducted security testing on military hardware, isolated networks in the Pentagon and U.S. election systems ahead of the presidential votes in 2020 and 2024.
Funding
Synack is funded by 21 investors. In April 2014, the company announced it had secured Series A funding from
Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers,
Google Ventures, Allegis Capital, and Derek Smith of Shape Security.
In February 2015, the company raised US$25 million in Series B funding.
In April 2017, it raised $21M from
Microsoft Ventures,
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...
, and
Singtel and prior investors.
In May 2020, Synack announced it had raised $52M from investors led by C5 Capital and B Capital Group.
See also
*
Security hacker
A security hacker or security researcher is someone who explores methods for breaching or bypassing defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, pro ...
*
Penetration test
A penetration test, colloquially known as a pentest, is an authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system; this is not to be confused with a vulnerability assessment. The test is perform ...
References
{{reflist
External links
synack.com
2013 establishments in California
American companies established in 2013
Security companies of the United States
Computer security companies
Companies based in Menlo Park, California
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area