San Diego cybersecurity startup PacketSled said this week it had signed a one-year contract with the city of San Diego to strengthen its “smart city” network.
San Diego has been an early beta customer for the startup for about a year, said PacketSled president and CEO Matt Harrigan.
“There are very orchestrated, focused cyber criminals out there today that carry out campaigns on specific targets,” said Gary Hayslip, the city’s chief information security officer. “They use specific malware and toolsets to launch attacks and we know there are organized groups behind them like hacktivists and nation state attackers. There has been a 60 percent increase in hacktivism attacks against cities and colleges over the past 3 years.”
The services provided as part of the contract, worth about $140,000, include threat assessment, automation of the city’s incident response process and the ability to nearly eliminate false positives on detections of attacks, the company said.
PacketSled was formed in 2013 and went to market in late 2015. The company, which has about 18 local employees and others at its Seattle offices, is based in Del Mar.
