Hakimo, a platform for physical security with cybersecurity-like tools, has announced its seed investment round. The company is originally founded by Stanford-trained engineers and funded by experienced venture capitalists with decades of experience in the field, is entering the market at a time of growing demand for new security solutions across repopulated office campuses.
Sam Joseph, the co-founder, and CEO said, “Its ability to pull together this range of data and inputs makes Hakimo a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system for physical security. Cybersecurity systems are used to generate massive numbers of events that a human analyst could not handle. Systems like SIEM and Security Orchestration and Response (SOAR) emerged to help manage and respond to those alerts and incidents. Physical security has now reached a point where it requires the same types of tools.”
Companies must now implement physical security measures that accommodate flexible employee schedules and less organized office traffic as workplaces reopen and new schedules emerge to accommodate the health and safety concerns of employees after the pandemic.
Joseph continued, “Corporate focus has long been on cybersecurity and protection of data. As cybersecurity professionals now focus on operational technology as a gateway for hacks and data loss (such as the incident at NASA JPL caused by a Raspberry Pi), protecting physical infrastructure from unauthorized entry becomes equally important. That’s what Hakimo does. Artificial intelligence provides the analysis so that human intelligence can make necessary changes to keep the enterprise safe.”
Tailgating is a common security vulnerability that Hakimo addresses. This is the phenomenon in which one person badges into a door and another sneaks in behind without presenting valid credentials. Hakimo employs computer vision to analyze camera footage relating to each badge event and coincides it with badging data to generate real-time alerts. Hakimo would go a step closer to achieving tools for influencing employee behavior such as automated email alerts and gamification.
