“No two companies, no two industries, no two tech solutions, and no two startups are the same.”

• Evaluating cyber risk requires consideration of data and compliance risk, the product’s ability to securely perform and scale, the management team’s understanding of and ability to address cyber risk, and the security of the product and operational technology.
• Cyber risk is a growing factor for investors, but investors are traditionally finance people. To them, the question of cyber risk is a business risk and brand risk question more than a cyber risk question.

“In the early days, it’s more track record based. It’s not until you start winning those big customers that it becomes more regulated and compliance oriented.”

“No two companies, no two industries, no two tech solutions, and no two startups are the same,” says Kyle York, co-founder, chief executive officer (CEO), and managing partner of York IE, a hybrid strategic advisory, investment, and operational growth firm. York IE differs from typical investment groups in that its partners have deep technology expertise and backgrounds in growing and running technology businesses.

York IE is an early-stage investor that works primarily with business-to-business software and infrastructure companies. York says, “Companies in our portfolio tend to be founded by domain experts, technologists, and engineers. They are run by technical CEO founders.”
The nature of York IE’s investments has a lot to do with how the company approaches cyber risk as part of overall investment risk. Given that his investments are in companies run by people who have deep technical expertise, there is a level of technical maturity in these companies that is not always the case in startups. Additionally, these companies provide applications and infrastructure that other businesses depend on for their operations.

This is an excerpt from 7 Experts on Evaluating and Managing Cyber Risk for Investors.  This eBook was generously sponsored by BlueVoyant.