Doral-based Lumu aids hundreds of clients in the Americas, expands to Europe
Why start up a cybersecurity company when more than 3,200 firms are already working in this highly competitive field in the U.S. alone, according to Gartner, the respected research and advisory firm?
For Ricardo Villadiego, an electrical engineer and cyber world entrepreneur, the answer was simple: “After years in cybersecurity, I realized that despite all the investments companies made in security tools, breaches were still happening. I knew there had to be a better way.”
It was in 2019 that Villadiego launched Lumu Technologies in Doral to offer this better way. He is both founder and CEO, his work informed by previous experience as the founder of an electronic fraud prevention company called Easy Solutions and as the head of cybersecurity at Cyxtera Technologies.
After studying how breaches to individual, corporate, government, and academic cyber systems occurred, the Colombian-born engineer concluded that all cybercriminals require a network to carry out their attacks. “They remain on the network undetected for way too long,” Villadiego says. “So, I knew the answer was helping organizations identify and respond to network threats in real time. And we did just that … we focus on delivering immediate, actionable insight.”
In simple terms, Lumu collects and standardizes metadata across a client’s network, including requests from computers to servers (DNS queries), spam box filters, access logs, and network flows. The platform then applies artificial intelligence to correlate threat intelligence and isolates points of compromise before they escalate.
Attackers are often adept at hiding once they penetrate a target network; however, they leave trace remnants behind when they move around the network. Those digital fingerprints can be the undoing of bad actors when Lumu is on the case.
“The Lumu solution was purpose-built to sift through massive amounts of network metadata in real time, detect the telltale signs of compromise, and illuminate those network blind spots with pinpoint accuracy,” Villadiego says. “I wanted to create a solution that shed light on blind spots – hence the name ‘Lumu’ – which means ‘light’ in Esperanto.”
A hacker or malware attack can penetrate a computer network in minutes, but breaches may occur hours after the initial compromise. “That’s why the real-time detection that Lumu provides is critical,” he says. “Our platform doesn’t just collect data … it translates into decisions.”
Villadiego attracted his first clients from banks in the U.S. and Latin America, and in 2020, he opened an office in Colombia to tap into the region’s technical talent and be closer to customers. Today, Lumu services hundreds of customers in North America and Latin America, including financial institutions, healthcare firms, retailers, municipalities, and educational institutions.
Earlier this year, Lumu expanded operations across the Atlantic by acquiring Maltiverse, a Spain-based threat intelligence enterprise. Maltiverse extended Lumu’s reach into Europe and the Middle East, and enhanced its threat intelligence capabilities. Lumu did not disclose the acquisition cost.
Villadiego and a small group of colleagues initially bootstrapped Lumu, but the firm has since received more than $38 million in funding. Aside from Villadiego and key employees, the company’s investors include Forgepoint Capital, BIP Capital, Opportunity Fund, and Exceptional Capital. The company now has more than 150 employees in different countries: software engineers, threat intelligence analysts, ethical hackers, and product managers, as well as sales, marketing, and customer service personnel.
Lumu’s pricing varies according to a client’s size and needs, and its fees also depend on the number of assets – namely, computers, smartphones, or other devices connected to the internet. The goal for all is the same: to detect hidden security compromises and neutralize them faster than the competition.
