This month’s TechConnect Profile is highlighting GroupSense. GroupSense is a digital risk protection services company that delivers customer-specific intelligence that dramatically improves enterprise cybersecurity and fraud-management operations. GroupSense is based in Arlington, Va., with a growing customer base that includes large enterprises, state and municipal governments, law enforcement agencies and more. Earlier this year, the company announced its record customer and revenue growth in 2021, including 75 percent year-over-year subscriber growth, adding nearly 50 new customers and 6 new partnerships.
Arlington Economic Development caught up with Kurtis Minder, Chief Executive Officer of GroupSense to discuss the company’s record growth, the major cyber threats of state and local governments, and the reasons GroupSense has chosen to call Arlington home.
GroupSense has had impressive customer and revenue growth for 2021. What were the major factors for your explosive growth over the past year?
Kurtis: Throughout the pandemic, cyber-crime hit an all-time high. With so many employees transitioning to remote work in 2020, organizations saw their attack surfaces expand rapidly. This creates wider avenues for threat actors to carry out cyber-attacks. As the pandemic continued in 2021, GroupSense began seeing a rise in ransomware attacks on businesses and governments of all shapes and sizes. There was a huge opportunity to educate organizations in cyber hygiene, ransomware readiness, and digital risk protection. I think that was one of the contributing factors to our growth over the last year.
As cybersecurity and fraud management continue to be major issues for enterprises and governments, can you discuss some of the specific vulnerabilities state and local governments have when performing their daily business? What is the best mitigation tactic to curb cyber threats and fraud?
Kurtis: State and local governments are often operating on outdated tech due to budget constraints. When computers and the software that runs on them is not up-to-date, threat actors have an easier time gaining access to those systems. But when you add humans to the mix, the problem gets even bigger because we make mistakes. If employees are reusing passwords, or downloading email attachments from unknown senders, it is much easier for a threat actor to infiltrate the system. The good thing is that cyber-attacks are preventable in most cases. The best tool an organization can employ is practicing good cyber hygiene at all levels. These are small actions everyone can take to protect the whole organization, like using a password manager, enabling multi-factor authentication, and updating software as soon as possible.
AED is grateful for GroupSense’s presence in Arlington. Can you tell us the primary reasons GroupSense has chosen Arlington to be home to the company’s headquarters?
Kurtis: We started GroupSense at Northside Social in Clarendon. Our seed investors are based here in Virginia, as are our advisors and many of our most strategic partners. Arlington and Northern Virginia are woven into the fabric of GroupSense culture.
About this Profile Series
Arlington's startup ecosystem has been rapidly expanding over the past five years and is quickly becoming recognized as an established innovation hub in the United States. Since 2015, Arlington-based companies have raised over $1.4 billion in venture capital across 144 deals covering several industries, including software, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, fintech, big data, digital media, and more. AED launched its monthly TechConnect Profiles to highlight and profile companies in our technology startup ecosystem.