After raising $2.5 million in funding, aDolus set to meet growing demand for supply chain security

Industrial cybersecurity vendor aDolus Technology announced this week that it has raised US$2.5 million in its latest funding round, which the company will use to pursue an aggressive go-to-market strategy, timed to meet the sharply growing demand for supply chain security solutions, particularly in critical industries.

The oversubscribed funding round follows a year marked by high-profile software supply chain attacks and increasing cybersecurity initiatives from the U.S. government.

In addition to expanding its internal marketing and sales team, aDolus is partnering with a range of industry-leading service providers, Rod Campbell, CEO at aDolus, told Industrial Cyber. “These include demand generation companies, digital marketing specialists, and public relations firms. We’ll also be expanding our media partnerships and accelerating our analyst outreach program.”

Until now, aDolus financing rounds have supported the company’s R&D efforts, expanding the capabilities of its FACT platform, such as building in artificial intelligence and machine learning to address weaknesses in software supply chain security, according to Campbell. “With this new round, we aim to broadly raise awareness about our FACT platform. We’re focused on signing more partners and customers so we rapidly expand the number of ICS artifacts in the platform. The more organizations that use FACT, the more valuable it becomes for everyone,” he added.

The company helps with the generation of enriched software bill of materials (SBOMs), delivering SBOMs in industry-standard formats, and produces the supporting tools to make these useful.

“We began working on risks to the software supply chain four years ago with the support of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Eric Byres, founder and CTO of aDolus, said in a media statement. “We got an early lead on building a sophisticated solution and with this round of funding we’ll be able to aggressively take it to market,” Byres adds.

The FACT platform correlates information from many sources across IT, ICS, IIoT, and IoT software supply chains, to deliver continuous assurance that packages and all their subcomponents are legitimate, tamper-free, and safe to ship and install. It provides unprecedented visibility, right down into the very bits of the software, to prevent the installation of unsafe software in critical systems. FACT offers versatility, supply chain security, and powerful, AI-driven analysis.

Available as a cloud product with private cloud and on-premises deployments available upon request, the FACT platform combines machine learning (ML), neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and binary analysis. The tool uses proven cryptographic technology that is known to be quantum-safe and can be easily integrated with existing company processes via a full-featured RESTful API.

“Our top objective is to increase the number of OEM vendors participating in the FACT platform, as that will expand the overall view of the supply chain and thus the value to the entire OT community,” Campbell said. “We’re currently running pilot programs with multiple major OT vendors who will transition to full partners in early 2022. We also plan to increase the reach of our thought leadership, build awareness of the aDolus brand, and generate demand for our platform through market education,” he added.

The Canadian company recently hired Jeff Rosen as its vice president for sales, and Ron Brash as its vice president of technical research and integrations to drive strategic partnerships and support product development. The company has also launched a new website to better position its offering.

Earlier this year, aDolus partnered with ICS management and cybersecurity company Verve Industrial to integrate the power of the aDolus FACT platform’s IoT/OT SBOM (software bill of materials) analysis and firmware validation into Verve’s IoT/OT endpoint vulnerability management platform. The Verve Security Center continues to deliver capabilities to its clients in a single, easy-to-use platform and aDolus’ FACT platform is the latest in Verve’s ability to both simplify and improve their client’s risk management.

Other industrial cybersecurity companies have also raised additional funds to take advantage of the new opportunities in the market.

In August, industrial cybersecurity company Nozomi Networks secured a $100 million pre-IPO funding round that was to set the pace for the enhancement of the company’s product portfolio in the evolving OT/IoT security market in industrial and critical infrastructure environments. Before that in June, another industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty secured ‘the largest investment ever made within the industrial cybersecurity sector,’ with its Series D financial round of US$140 million, taking the company’s total funding to $235 million.

Anna Ribeiro

Industrial Cyber News Editor. Anna Ribeiro is a freelance journalist with over 14 years of experience in the areas of security, data storage, virtualization and IoT.