Sixgen’s Kyrus Acquisition Boosts National Cybersecurity

Sixgen purchased a Washington D.C.-area hardware and software reverse engineering vendor to strengthen national security by bringing world-class cyber operators and big data analytics together.

See Also: Maximizing data utility in mission delivery, citizen services, and education

The acquisition of Kyrus will help Annapolis, Md.-based Sixgen enhance its capabilities in both the national security and critical infrastructure domains for U.S. government clients in the civilian, defense and intelligence sectors, according to CEO Jack Wilmer. He said Sixgen’s third acquisition in six months will create an integrated ecosystem for cyber operations for the national security community.

“When you look at what Kyrus actually provides, they have exceptional engineering talent, and they do everything from reverse engineering to engineering of new capabilities, things along those lines that really, really complement the world-class operators that we have,” Wilmer told Information Security Media Group.

What Sets Kyrus’ Approach to Security Apart

Kyrus, founded in 2009, employs roughly 100 people and hasn’t raised any outside funding. The company has been led since 2010 by Dan Hall, who previously spent nearly nine years as a vice president at ManTech. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Both Sixgen and Kyrus are deeply entrenched in the national security sector, with a shared focus on mission-critical operations, according to Wilmer (see: Accellion Attack Involved Extensive Reverse Engineering).

Wilmer said Sixgen’s focus on critical infrastructure aligns with Kyrus’ technical expertise, particularly in analyzing and securing systems without source code. The lack of customer overlap between Sixgen and Kyrus ensures the two organizations can expand their market presence without internal competition, opening the door for Sixgen to access new clients while providing Kyrus customers with more services.

“Our customers are very interested in trying to understand, ‘What are the major themes that they can address that will knock out a whole category of vulnerabilities, as opposed to just trying to solve every point vulnerability by itself?'” Kyrus said. “There’s some pretty logical big data and machine learning applications in that space.”

Wilmer said Kyrus’ reverse engineering is critical for scenarios where devices or systems have been compromised by adversaries, enabling organizations to understand potential threats. Kyrus’ big data analytics, meanwhile, provide a proactive approach to cybersecurity by enabling clients to identify systemic vulnerabilities rather than addressing individual weaknesses, according to Wilmer.

“The reverse engineering technical expertise combined with the ability to bring that adversarial mindset of what potential compromises are, there’s a lot of places where we could go with that,” he said. “One of Kyrus’ customers had a need for some space expertise, and we have an individual with a tremendous amount of expertise, who had written multiple books on offensive cyber operations in space.”

How Sixgen, Kyrus Will Come Together

Wilmer said the integration process is focused on maintaining operational continuity while exploring the best tools and processes from both organizations. Kyrus will operate as it did pre-acquisition to avoid disruption, with long-term integration milestones determined by a detailed analysis of complementary capabilities. Sixgen wants to ensure integration efforts don’t disrupt ongoing projects or relationships.

“We’re initially going to be operating with the Kyrus team completely intact, the exact same way it was operating before,” Wilmer said. “And then what we’re going to do is spend the next period of time to really understand, ‘What are the best tools, capabilities and processes from each organization that we want to adopt?’ And then, ‘what’s the right organizational structure as we join both together?'”

Sixgen primarily competes against large government contractors like Booz Allen in the services domain, though Wilmer said the company also collaborates with the consulting firm on certain projects. Although Sixgen and Kyrus serve similar types of customers in the U.S. government, defense and intelligence spaces, Wilmer said their actual client rosters are largely distinct.

“Their reach in different customers was really complementary to our customers that we already had, and so it really helped us to expand our impact across that national security community,” Wilmer said.

Key metrics for Sixgen around the Kyrus acquisition will include customer satisfaction levels, growth in service delivery, and the ability to cross-leverage capabilities across the two companies, Wilmer said. While Sixgen is focused on integrating the Boldend, Secure Enterprise Engineering and Kyrus deals made late this year, the company remains open to further deals if they align with mission and capabilities.

“What does the addition of Kyrus allow us to do?” Wilmer said. “It’s probably not creating new KPIs or anything like that. It’s just more of, ‘How do we want to adjust the targets based on what our new set of capabilities are?'”