How AI is reshaping the cybersecurity startup landscape

ChatGPT at the enterprise level has been a game changer. The interface and LLMs created a decade of AI awareness in one year, even though a third of cybersecurity companies were already using AI. The difference today is scale, as the cloud enables massive data sets of all kinds, ranging from 700 variables to millions of data points.

See also: From CNAPP to CDR: the way forward in cybersecurity

Innovators are looking to use AI to do something that incumbents can’t do, said Alex Doll, founder and managing partner of Ten Eleven Ventures. Incumbents typically struggle with new attack surfaces, but AI is a new attack surface along with mobile and cloud. Startups scale at a faster pace and are not burdened by technical debt. Additionally, there are no truly established players, making it a fertile area to invest in.

“Outside the security industry, most people don’t understand how data flows, and AI is going to compound that problem in ways that aren’t easy to solve,” Doll said. “This creates opportunities for companies focused on trust, privacy and AI.”

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at RSA Conference 2024Doll also discussed:

• How AI has moved from algorithm to issues related to data pipeline, cloud usage and unique identification of AI data;
• Why AI hallucinations are a symptom of a larger problem: where the data comes from;
• AI is just mass automation where organizations create a layer of abstraction and automate.

Doll founded Ten Eleven and has years of experience in venture capital and growth opportunities in the cybersecurity industry. In 2002, he co-founded PGP Corp. and was a member of the management team as the company pioneered the encryption and data protection markets. After PGP, Doll continued his involvement in security companies as an angel investor, independent director and security deals team consultant at private equity firm KKR.