Cat Labs is a newly founded startup operating in the decentralized finance sector to help fight crypto crime. The startup launched 3 months ago and has 8 full-time employees as well as 5 contractors. The startup operates in 2 market verticals, the first one being tailored services towards governments and the second being tailored towards crypto cybersecurity.
The firm helps government clients recover cryptocurrency assets from digital evidence obtained from hackers’ devices including computers and phones. In the crypto-focused cybersecurity, the firm offers the private sector solutions to prevent digital-asset theft by securing their infrastructure’s architecture.
To meet its obligations, Cat Labs has announced that it has raised $4.3 million in an undisclosed funding round that attracted investors including Castle Island Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, CMT Digital, Newark Venture Partners and RW3 Ventures. This funding came in right after the completion of the stealth development of the firm which has officially launched as of April 11th.
The firm was founded by Lilita Infante, a former special agent with the DOJ(Department Of Justice) of the US. Infante quit the DOJ just 3 months ago after working for the agency for more than 10 years to build a forensic and cybersecurity startup focused on digital asset recovery. While speaking in an interview, Infante said that crypto has made it easy to monetize hacks, scams and fraud. However, she acknowledged that there are still many technological gaps in digital forensics and investigative technology as well as law enforcement therefore, creating a huge backlog of cases.
According to Infante, the build up of cases prevents law enforcement from effectively handling these cases.
The firm is building tools to fight crypto crime in both of its market verticals. In the digital-asset recovery vertical, the firm is building tooling to seize digital evidence from computers, phones, cloud accounts, servers and email accounts . This vertical has a design partner program where the firm is onboarding law firms and law enforcement agencies to their platform under the Recovery CAT Toolset program.
Similarly on the crypto cyber security vertical, CAT Labs is developing cyber security protocols for crypto projects and other crypto institutions to prevent hacks and mitigate vulnerabilities. While leveraging the most seasoned cyptographers, the firm aims to build a world class crypto security endpoint with threat intelligence and incident response. Under this vertical, the firm has a design partner program for onboarding financial institutions, hedge funds and providers in NFTs, DAOs and Metaverse to their platform under the Security CAT Toolset program.
Hacks, frauds and scams are on the rise to an all-time high and in the process poisoning the booming web3 and decentralized finance sectors. It is estimated that the global cost of cyber crime will have risen to a staggering $10.5 Trillion by the year 2025. This indicates the lucrative nature of this sector and CAT Labs is among other firms rushing to capitalize on this sector.
CAT Labs is therefore poised to achieve success in addition to the fact that the founding team has had extensive experience in the management and operations of the digital asset recovery department for the DOJ. Rand Labs, blockchain development firm for Algorand, is one of the first clients to cash in from CAT Lab’s services. CAT Labs formed part of the response team for the $9.2 million exploit that rocked MyAlgo, Algorand’s wallet provider.
