NSO Group cofounder Omri Lavie and Isaac Zack today unveiled Orchestra, a new cybersecurity startup. Lavie and Zak jointly established the Founders Group investment firm. Orchestra is in the midst of a financing round in which it is trying to raise $20 million, most of which has already been raised. Lavie will be the new company's CEO, and Zack will be COO. Pico Partners managing partner Elie Wurtman will be chairman of the board of directors.
Orchestra will develop a cybersecurity platform for organizations, and will commence operations in 2018. The founders say that 700 cybersecurity startups are active in Israel, most of which are offering niche solutions in a competitive market.
Lavie said today, "Organizations are now in an impossible situation when they are faced with planning cybersecurity. In order to create an effective defensive envelope, they have to buy dozens of solutions; this is not economically worthwhile and requires a lot of systems management resources. The result they get is a collection of solutions that do not always mesh with one another and are not very effective, due to the large number of parties responsible for different areas of cybersecurity. Orchestra is designed to solve precisely that situation by making cybersecurity a single orchestra with a single conductor, instead of a collection of instruments." Commenting on the market as a whole, Lavie said, "It's premature to say that the market is a bubble, but we're not far away from it. There is a demand from customers for consolidation of solutions."
Zack added, "Cyber startups are currently in a very challenging situation. The surplus of solutions and fierce competition in the market require large marketing resources from small companies. Niche companies that appeal to a small part of the pie are having to set up independent marketing, support, and operations systems out of proportion to their size. The situation is forcing development personnel and cyber experts who found companies to deal with marketing, instead of developing their product and preserving or achieving a competitive advantage. The situation is just as challenging for investors, who see their investment in the early rounds channeled mainly into marketing instead of towards continued development of the product."
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on November 5, 2017
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