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Make cybersecurity a priority if you want to raise from investors

cyber

Martin Gibson is a venture partner at Accel. In this article, he explains why tech founders need to make cybersecurity a priority if they want to raise from investors.

As an investor, you’re often asked by early-stage companies how they should get ready to pitch for their next funding round. The obvious answers are in areas most founders already know to focus on: product, market opportunity, people. There is another consideration however, one that despite its growing importance is still not as widely acknowledged as it should be: cybersecurity.

You don’t need to look far to see how cyber attacks are becoming a routine part of the business landscape. In the last year, major security breaches have caused chaos in organisations from Equifax to Verizon and the UK’s National Health Service. But it’s not just large companies that are under threat. Startups and small companies, are the focus of cyber attacks more and more frequently. Research from Symantec found that, while in 2011 just 18% of spear phishing attacks were targeted at small businesses, by 2015 that proportion had risen to 43%....