WhiteHawk secures first commercial contract for the 360 Cyber Risk Framework

Cybersecurity specialist firm WhiteHawk (ASX: WHK) has secured its first contract as a publicly listed company having completed its ASX listing earlier this year.

Claiming to be the “world’s first cybersecurity exchange”, WhiteHawk has secured the first sale of its 360 Cyber Risk Framework through a US$325,000 (A$433,000) contract.

WhiteHawk offers its users a cloud-based cybersecurity exchange platform that delivers “solutions on demand” for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The platform enables customers to leverage their custom security profile to find appropriate tools and content via specialised algorithms to better understand how to improve and stay ahead of threats.

Remaining tight-lipped as to the identity of its client, WhiteHawk said that the contract is with a “top 10 financial institution” in the US, focused on identifying its exposure to business and cybersecurity risk through its 50 most critical sub-contractors. The initial phase of the contract will commence later this month and will be “executed over the course of 45 days”, the company said.

Swooping in for early revenues

Launched in March this year, WhiteHawk’s 360 Cyber Risk Framework is a new product developed in partnership with BitSight and Interos, able to provide its users with tailored feedback and insights on the business and cyber risks related to its network of sub-contractors.

The product offering then allows WhiteHawk to generate a risk profile for each of the sub-contractors through its “CyberPath decision engine” and offering recommendations on products and solutions that effectively mitigate these risks while “driving additional transactional activity for the WhiteHawk Exchange”.

The 360 Cyber Risk Framework has primarily been designed with major manufacturers, banks, federal contractors, and Fortune 1,000 companies in mind, to address the cyber risks associated with their supply chain companies.

WhitHawk’s online cybersecurity platform has already begun generating revenue in the United States – its initial target market. The cybersecurity upstart claims the US market accounts for 80% of global cybersecurity demand and was worth US$75 billion in 2025.

Advancing into the future

To some extent, the deal validates its claims made in its prospectus upon listing in January where the company said it plans to “sell advisory services and cybersecurity business intelligence data sets”.

The overall goal is to create a one-stop-shop for businesses to gather intelligence and share it via an exchange which WhiteHawk ultimately controls. Its stated aim was keeping businesses in the know of what cyber trends are directly impacting their business sector and how to protect themselves from monetary and proprietary data loss and disruption.

As part of its early growth strategy, WhiteHawk said its US division regularly communicates with an informal network of over 3,000 midsize company executives and mid-level managers through its proprietary portal, whom it considers to be potential clients “if not already existing clients”.

According to its prospectus, some of its upcoming developments could include an “online business-to-business e-commerce cloud-based platform” based upon ‘Drupal’ for content management, ‘Stripe for Sales’ and ‘Salesforce’ for customer relationship management.

Furthermore, WhiteHawk intends to create a “decision support system incorporating artificial intelligence and machine-learning analytics”.

“The weakest link for sophisticated, large companies is often their small or mid-sized sub-contractors, vendors or supply chain companies. Our 360 Cyber Risk Framework is designed specifically to identify and mitigate these risks, and we are very excited to be providing this critical and immediate cyber risk insight and mitigation at scale for a US Top 10 financial institution,” said Terry Roberts, executive chairman of WhiteHawk.

“We expect this contract will introduce our online marketplace and unique services to at least 50 small and medium-sized businesses that need our help, driving future opportunities for WhiteHawk and its 360 Cyber Risk Framework solution in the near term,” said Mr Roberts.

With commercial momentum now building, WhiteHawk has moved to clarify its recent activities by hastily arranging a dedicated webinar for investors to be held on 22 May, 2018.