Release: 15Sept 2022
CYBERA Global Inc. announced today that it has secured an additional $5M in an oversubscribed equity round led by Converge VC and New North Ventures with the participation of Founder Collective, Swiss VCs Serpentine, CV VC, and additional VCs, Angel, and private investors.
The additional funds will focus on scaling CYBERA’s category-defining solutions addressing cybercrime – a growing global issue. According to the FBI’s IC3 division, financial cybercrime cost businesses a combined $6.9 billion in 2021 – up 164% from 2020.
“As a former prosecutor, I have seen the impact of this issue first hand, as well as the complexities of tracking international gangs operating at high speed,” noted Nicola Staub, CEO and co-Founder of CYBERA.
“Our two initial solutions focus on providing victims a quick response mechanism, and then a global watchlist which allows information to be securely shared with our clients across the financial system to ensure funds and accounts can be quickly flagged and addressed. This is a fully scalable, secure solution and addresses key regulatory concerns. We have already flagged over two thousand problematic accounts and wallets to authorities, and helped to freeze hundreds of thousands of dollars, saving a multiple of that amount in further legal and reimbursement costs.”
CYBERA was created to address these two clear gaps in the market – logging and sharing victim reports and creating a global watchlist for problematic accounts. The international scope and complexity of these scams often link financial institutions, private businesses, technology companies, and international, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, so enforcement and assigning responsibility have become very difficult.
“Investors clearly understand the potential of CYBERA to address these systemic global issues and create a new category in the fight against cybercrime,” concluded Staub. “I’m delighted to announce this funding injection which will support our ability to deliver these solutions to institutions and customers around the world.”
CYBERCRIME – A GROWING PROBLEM:
Established scams such as Business Email Compromise (BEC) still cause a significant impact – BEC represents $2.4 billion of losses in the US alone. A typical example:
- The financial department of a mid-sized US business receives an instruction via email from their CEO who is traveling to urgently wire $80,000.00 to a vendor based in Germany with the invoice attached. The wire is immediately executed.
- The financial department checks in the next day with the CEO, who is back in the office, and the team finds out that the email was fraudulent and sent by cybercriminals. The money is gone.
There is currently no effective solution to disrupt such simple but highly effective attacks.
This is not a new problem – but it is one that has not been effectively addressed in the past:
- INTERPOL recommends a fast global reaction by law enforcement and financial intermediaries to freeze stolen victim funds, but it rarely happens. There are no commonly used tools.
- Regulating bodies such as FATF and leading Industry groups such as P20 recommend sharing of crime information – for example bank accounts criminals use to cash out – to prevent financial cybercrimes and money laundering, but this is not happening at scale.
Now, leveraging CYBERA COMPLAINT™ allows the victim to quickly report the issue, including any account details they may have. Once this is added to the CYBERA WATCHLIST™, financial institutions or crypto businesses worldwide are able to potentially flag the stolen proceeds and freeze these before they are cashed out.
The CYBERA solution is effective across both fiat and crypto businesses, which strengthens the trust and safety for the blockchain based financial ecosystem. Given that over 50% of its cybercrime data is connected to a crypto address, the CYBERA solution gives victims and partners across the traditional and crypto sectors a way to share tangible and actionable intelligence on money mules, including suspicious wallet addresses and fiat bank accounts.
CYBERA is on track to becoming the category-defining company enabling victims, the financial industry, and law enforcement to use innovative technology solutions to act fast against these criminals:
- CYBERCRIME COMPLAINTTM – the go-to cybercrime reporting platform coordinates a global legal response to support victims, banks, VASPs, and law enforcement.
- CYBERCRIME WATCHLISTTM – the world’s first scalable way to share actionable cybercrime information, enables financial institutions and crypto businesses to stop more fraud and money laundering even before the losses occur.
ABOUT CYBERA:
At CYBERA we’re on a mission to stop money laundering and help protect customers from scams and other financial cybercrimes. We close gaps that allow cyber criminals to thrive by sharing actionable information in real-time with financial institutions, fintech, and crypto exchanges, and coordinating a global legal response to support victims of financial cybercrime. Backed by top US & Swiss Venture Capital Investors such as Founder Collective, Converge VC, NNV, Serpentine VC, and others. Headquartered in New York City, CYBERA has a remote work culture and real-life presence in Seattle, New York, Zurich, London, Melbourne, Ukraine, and Dubai.
Find out more about how CYBERA can help protect your institution and its customers from financial cybercrime at www.cybera.io.
