Tag: Bret Piatt

Dry Line Partners Backs Jungle Disk Acquisition of 3 Tech Companies
21Sep By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Dry Line Partners Backs Jungle Disk Acquisition of 3 Tech Companies

The new San Antonio and Austin, Texas-based private equity fund Dry Line Partners LLC has announced its first business acquisitions that will help grow an Alamo City cybersecurity company.  Dry Line worked with Porthcawl Holdings LLC to back Jungle Disk’s purchase of three businesses from parent company J2 Global, Inc., a leading internet information and services company with a portfolio of brands. The acquired businesses, KeepItSafe, LiveVault, and OffsiteDataSync., will bring these three "global backup and disaster recovery businesses under a common ownership, increasing the capabilities for us [Jungle Disk] to meet customer needs," said Bret Piatt, CEO of Jungle Disk, a San Antonio online backup software service and data security company.Piatt is an entrepreneur and investor wh...
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Cyber Warrior Network Creates Cyber Esports League to Fill Jobs
23Jul By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Cyber Warrior Network Creates Cyber Esports League to Fill Jobs

A new cyber esports league will be hosting the Cyber Esports Tournament at this year's DEF CON, thanks to a startup founder with a vision for closing the cybersecurity workforce gap.Players in the world's first cyber warfare esports league will validate their cybersecurity skills and get matched to fill real-world cybersecurity jobs at the annual DEF CON, a hacker convention that starts this year on August 5, immediately following Black Hat in Las Vegas. Players finishing in first place will win $1,000. To register, click here.U.S. Air Force veteran Nigel LeBlanc launched Cyber Warrior Network (CWN) in 2015 after he realized transitioning military members needed help connecting with civilian employers looking for cyber experts. LeBlanc and his startup team created the highl...
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Modern Managed IT Lands $1M Seed Investment from Geekdom Fund
8Dec By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Modern Managed IT Lands $1M Seed Investment from Geekdom Fund

Information Technology (IT) services provider Modern Managed IT announced Tuesday it had closed a $1 million seed funding round led by the San Antonio-based venture capital firms Geekdom Fund, which provided $750,000.  186k Ventures, an early-stage venture fund in San Antonio that makes investments in technology companies, also participated in the round.Modern Managed IT plans to use the investment to grow its IT staff as it expands operations in San Antonio and across Texas, Modern Managed IT CEO Luis Rodriguez told Startups San Antonio.“Top grade, cost-effective IT used to be a luxury for small businesses – not in a COVID-impacted world," stated Geekdom Fund managing director Don Douglas. "The new normal requires more online selling, remote operation, and modern technology for bu...
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CyberWraith Video Game New Way to Close Cybersecurity Workforce Gap
17Oct By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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CyberWraith Video Game New Way to Close Cybersecurity Workforce Gap

The cybersecurity labor crunch is projected to hit 3.5 million unfilled jobs by 2021. Yet, possessing certifications is not enough for those on the front lines of cybersecurity. Contributing to the workforce gap is the challenge in identifying the skills and experience candidates need for these jobs.One San Antonio entrepreneur is looking to solve this problem by proposing a new, immersive video game called CyberWraith as the solution.U.S. Air Force veteran Nigel LeBlanc launched the Cyber Warrior Network (CWN) in 2015 after he realized transitioning military members needed help connecting with civilian employers looking for cyber experts. He saw the need to upend the cybersecurity applicant tracking system, which he called a “glorified keyword match between the job listing and can...
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Jungle Disk Launches Cybersecurity Awareness Training in a SaaS Platform
5Sep By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Jungle Disk Launches Cybersecurity Awareness Training in a SaaS Platform

A new approach to providing cybersecurity awareness training is launching in San Antonio.Jungle Disk announced Thursday it has added cybersecurity awareness training to its suite of services designed for small businesses.  The employee training and tools will be available to customers as a monthly subscription service, a first in the cybersecurity awareness training industry.Jungle Disk is a cybersecurity company that caters to small and midsize businesses that spun out of Rackspace in 2016 with an $11 million investment. The company has 27 employees and about 25,000 customers.Launching these training tools as a recurring Software as a Service or SaaS service works well for small business owners who usually cannot afford expensive one-time training costs or cannot staff a robus...
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Internships for High School Students Teach Valuable Skills
24Apr By Guest Author2 Comments
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Internships for High School Students Teach Valuable Skills

Guest writer and senior Karina Montez interviewed San Antonio’s International School of the Americas students about lessons learned from their internship experiences.College students are popular sources of temporary help for local businesses. Younger high school interns may pose some challenges for employers, but with preparation, the experience can yield benefits for students and employers alike.We interviewed students from San Antonio’s International School of the Americas to ask about what they learned from their internship experiences so that students, parents, and employers alike can understand what high school seniors can learn from internships.Nathan Alejandro, an 18-year-old senior, landed an internship with Elevate Systems, a reverse mechanical engineering company....
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Tailored for Smaller Businesses, CyberFortress Delivers New Kind of Cyber Insurance
2Jan By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Tailored for Smaller Businesses, CyberFortress Delivers New Kind of Cyber Insurance

Most insurance providers tend to tailor their cyber insurance policies for large-scale enterprises. Business owners usually must pay large annual premiums upfront for oftentimes confusing coverage options that lack historical data to quantify cybersecurity risks. Most policies do not cover cyber-instigated business interruption which can lead to significant losses in online revenue. If the company files a claim, the investigation can take many months during which the owner must survive financially before receiving a payout on an insurance policy. Lacking the robust reserves of larger companies, small- or medium-sized business owners may face bankruptcy in the aftermath of a cyber event.“Applying analog methods to quantify digital risk just doesn’t work—actuary tables for cyber risk...
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San Antonio: Moving from a Cybersecurity City to ‘Cyber City, USA’
6Nov By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
Guest Posts

San Antonio: Moving from a Cybersecurity City to ‘Cyber City, USA’

“Cybersecurity as an industry is still in its infancy, and San Antonio is among the elite locations poised for growth," a Deloitte report found. What are the next steps for San Antonio as the city leverages its strengths in cybersecurity?Natalie Wilson is a senior associate in the Cybersecurity, Data Protection, and Privacy Practice Group in the San Antonio office of Langley & Banack, Inc. Her colleague, Lui Chambers, recently moderated a multidisciplinary panel discussing San Antonio’s cybersecurity future. Hosted by the Association for Corporate Growth, the Oct. 30 discussion included panelists Jim Perschbach, Port San Antonio CEO and president, Bret Piatt, Jungle Disk CEO, Dr. Greg White, director of the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at UTSA, and Michael ...
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San Antonio Startup Community Has Podcast Fever
19Oct By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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San Antonio Startup Community Has Podcast Fever

This post contains affiliate links at no extra cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more information.There’s no denying it—podcasts are more popular than ever. The debut of Apple’s podcast analytics earlier in 2018 has helped confirm that podcast listeners are hyper-engaged, super-supportive audiences. The podcast audience has consistently grown at a rate of 10 to 20 percent annually, a trend which seems likely to continue. Startups often launch a podcast because founders can tell their story directly to listeners and it doesn’t take a significant investment to get started.Many startup founders decide to launch podcasts to share their expertise. San Antonio-based innovators in the science, cybersecurity, and tech sectors share passions on web development, cryptocurrency, bios...
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Trinity University’s Students+Startups to Expand Nationwide in 2019
16Jul By Iris Gonzalez1 Comment
Articles, Featured

Trinity University’s Students+Startups to Expand Nationwide in 2019

One San Antonio university internship program placing students at local startups is expanding its local reach to college students nationwide. Students+Startups, run collaboratively between Trinity University, the nonprofit 80/20 Foundation, and San Antonio co-working community Geekdom announced the program's expansion Monday.The internship program is funded by a grant from the 80/20 Foundation, established by the co-founder and former Rackspace chairman Graham Weston. The 80/20 Foundation had planned on opening the application process beyond Trinity University to students at all San Antonio colleges starting in 2019, according to Weston. In its first three years, the pilot program was solely offered to Trinity University students and had experienced three years of steady growth. In 201...
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