Several Defense Department and intelligence agency employees have since moved to Silicon Valley, Calif. within the past year to establish start-up businesses focusing on cybersecurity tools, the New York Times reported Thursday.Somini Sengupta writes venture capitalists invested $1 billion into security start-ups in 2012, more than twice the amount in 2010.
Those businesses want to hire experts with insider knowledge of national security matters in order to build businesses that will work to address cyber threats or analyze huge volumes of data, Sengupta reports.
“They have unique insights because they’ve been on the front line,†Matthew Howard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst and now managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners, told the Times.
Howard has invested in various startup companies such as computer security vendor Synack, according to the report.
Jay Kaplan and Mark Kuhr, formerly operatives at the National Security Agency, founded Synack and raised $1.5 million in funding, reports the Times.
Sengupta writes Howard also injected cash into Morta Security, which was started by Raj Shah, a former U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot in Iraq.
