Sqrrl
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Cybersecurity, Big data analytics |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founder | Oren Falkowitz, Ely Kahn |
| Defunct | January 24, 2018 |
| Fate | Acquired by Amazon |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Oren Falkowitz (CEO and Co-Founder), Ely Kahn (Co-Founder) |
| Products | Threat hunting platform based on Apache Accumulo |
| Parent | Amazon (since 2018) |
| Website | sqrrl |
Sqrrl Data, Inc. was a U.S.-based company specializing in cybersecurity and big data analytics, established in 2012 with roots tracing back to the United States Intelligence Community and the National Security Agency. The firm played a role in the development of Apache Accumulo and other related Apache projects. Its flagship offering was a threat hunting platform designed to identify advanced persistent threats.
In January 2018, Sqrrl became part of Amazon through acquisition.
History
The founders of Sqrrl included former officials from the NSA and US Cyber Command, such as CEO and Co-Founder Oren Falkowitz and Co-Founder Ely Kahn, who previously served as a U.S. cybersecurity policy director. The company’s cybersecurity products were built upon the open-source Apache Accumulo technology, initially developed starting in 2008 and released as open source in 2011. Although Sqrrl was originally established in Washington, D.C., it later moved its main office to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In August 2012, Sqrrl obtained $2 million in seed capital led by investors like Accomplice and Matrix Partners. Subsequent funding rounds brought in $5.2 million in October 2013 and an additional $7.1 million in February 2015 to enhance its capabilities in linked data analysis.
On January 24, 2018, Amazon acquired Sqrrl to incorporate its technology into Amazon Web Services, thereby strengthening AWS’s threat detection solutions.
Threat hunting platform
Sqrrl’s principal product was a visual platform for cyber threat hunting that combined link analysis with user behavior analytics. It merged data from users, entities, assets, and events into a behavior graph, enabling security professionals to explore incidents and uncover concealed threats. The solution also offered compatibility with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms such as IBM QRadar, integrating machine learning techniques and risk scoring to improve the identification of threats.
Awards
The company earned several accolades including SC Magazine’s Top Innovator awards in both 2015 and 2016, as well as a Cybersecurity Excellence Award in 2017 within the emerging "Threat Hunting" category.
See also
- Apache Software Foundation
- Big data
- Bigtable
- Cyber threat hunting
- MapReduce
- Real-time database
- User behavior analytics
External links
- Articles with short description
- Cloud computing providers
- Organizations based in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- American companies established in 2012
- Software companies based in Massachusetts
- Amazon (company) acquisitions
- Amazon Web Services
- Defunct software companies of the United States
- Companies of the United States by year of establishment
- 5