BAE Cyber Security Venture Secures Top-tier Investment for Launch As New Business

Following the development and internal incubation of an early stage cyber security venture, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence has announced the spin-out of a new company, SOC.OS . The move sees the innovative SOC.OS gain £2million in funding from two top-tier cyber and deep tech venture capital partners, Hoxton Ventures and Speedinvest, who alongside the founding team will help fuel the next growth stage of the business.

SOC.OS is designed to help small, internal security teams manage the ever-growing number of alerts produced by threat protection and detection tools.  It works by continuously analysing, triaging, and prioritising alerts, escalating the most important incidents to the IT security team for further review. A number of early adopting customers including the UK Atomic Energy Authority and The University of Sussex are already using the technology.

SOC.OS was born within the Futures team of BAE Systems Applied Intelligence – an internal innovation and venture incubation hub – and it also benefited from BAE Systems’ close collaboration with CyLon, a leading cyber security accelerator, participating as part of CyLon’s cohort 9 programme in 2019. Spinning out SOC.OS with the continued support of BAE Systems and the new VC partners means the founding team can now develop and scale the SOC.OS service at speed, accelerating the value it delivers to its growing customer base.

The new company launched officially in June 2020, with Dave Mareels as its CEO. Mareels, who joined BAE Systems on an internal engineering leadership programme in 2017, anticipates strong growth despite the global crisis.

He said: “Unfortunately, global pandemics don’t slow down the antagonists, the battle of defending against and responding to malicious activity across the digital estate remains constant. To add to the challenge, a new working-from-home-norm has been introduced which increases IT service delivery and business continuity pressures.”

“Spinning out SOC.OS during these unprecedented times has only strengthened our resolve and dedication to our mission, which is to augment the small and already over-stretched IT teams with their day-to-day security operations. It’s an exciting time for our team and customer base and I look forward to the opportunity and next phase of our growth.”

Andy Broom, Strategy Director at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence commented, “As SOC.OS developed, the team was able to demonstrate its benefits to a wide number of enterprises who value cyber resilience. We are proud of what the team has achieved to-date under BAE Systems’ stewardship. Spinning out SOC.OS will allow it to continue to grow independently in markets which are beyond our strategic focus.”

Hussein Kanji, Founding Partner at Hoxton Ventures added: “As early investors in Darktrace, we know a thing or two about identifying great UK cyber security talent. We are excited to be partnering with SOC.OS and working with the UK’s leading defence player and one of our favourite co-investors, Speedinvest, to spin out this unique company.”

Marcel van der Heijden, Lead Deep Tech Partner, Speedinvest concluded: "Small and medium-sized businesses often face the same cyber threats that strike large companies. Unfortunately, they simply can't afford the teams required to effectively prevent or manage such attacks. SOC.OS helps these businesses, which are the backbone of our economies, better protect themselves. Backed by technology originally developed at BAE Systems, we believe SOC.OS is delivering a critical solution to a global problem, and we're excited to help them get it into the hands of businesses around the world."