Newbury based CyberHive raises £1.8 million to accelerate growth

Business News, Technology & Innovation

By Nicky Godding

13 May 2021

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CyberHive, the Newbury-based cybersecurity company, has secured a £1.8 million investment, co-led by 24Haymarket and Mercia Fund Management’s EIS funds.

CyberHive has developed a patent-protected cybersecurity platform called Trusted Cloud, co-developed with the University of Oxford. Trusted Cloud uses a patented technique known as ‘hardware-backed distributed whitelisting’ to block cyber attacks and identify breaches in seconds that would go undetected by competing technologies for weeks or even months. Additionally, its ‘Gatekeeper for Office 365′ was designed to secure Microsoft Office 365 up to National Cyber Security Centre standards to protect remote workers from attack.

With this funding, CyberHive will have the ability to take its innovation to a much wider market to help them benefit from the huge leaps in security and productivity being enjoyed by the lead customers.

Alan Platt, CEO of CyberHive said: “Our technology provided the perfect way to facilitate secure home-working for key organisations at a critical time using our ‘Gatekeeper for Office 365’ remote working solution. Since then, we have applied the same concepts and technology to protect numerous other applications for large organisations, from remote working solutions to securing cloud computing and handling highly sensitive information.”

Matthew Bowcock, Investor Director representing 24Haymarket, added: “Governments and businesses need to be able to take advantage of new technologies with confidence, especially as remote working has become a reality of life for many. Any attack has to be instantly identified to minimise damage. CyberHive is a world leader in this field and 24Haymarket is excited to be supporting its ambitious growth plans, alongside Mercia.”

Chris Kilroy, Investment Director at Mercia, said: “The increasing threat from cyber attacks is one of the most challenging problems facing governments and commercial organisations globally. CyberHive’s solution is state-of-the-art and the company is led by a strong and highly backable management team. That is why we are excited to invest alongside 24Haymarket to help CyberHive in the next stage of their journey.”

CyberHive’s board is supported by Enda Kenny, who served as Taoiseach of Ireland from 2011 to 2017. Mr Kenny said: “I am delighted to work with CyberHive to roll this product out globally, putting a stop to the spread of increasingly damaging data breaches that have plagued our society for years.”

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.