Zebeth Media Solutions

Author : zebethcontrol

AstraZeneca password lapse exposed patient data • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in astrazeneca, cybersecurity, data security, healthcare, SecurityNo Comments on AstraZeneca password lapse exposed patient data • ZebethMedia

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has blamed “user error” for leaving a list of credentials online for more than a year that exposed access to sensitive patient data. Mossab Hussein, chief security officer at cybersecurity startup SpiderSilk, told ZebethMedia that a developer left the credentials for an AstraZeneca internal server on code sharing site GitHub in 2021. The credentials allowed access to a test Salesforce cloud environment, often used by businesses to manage their customers, but the test environment contained some patient data, Hussein said. Some of the data related to AZ&ME applications, which offers discounts to patients who need medications. ZebethMedia provided details of the exposed credentials to AstraZeneca, and the GitHub repository containing the credentials was inaccessible hours later. In a statement, AstraZeneca spokesperson Patrick Barth told ZebethMedia: “The protection of personal data is extremely important to us and we strive for the highest standards and compliance with all applicable rules and laws. Due to an [sic] user error, some data records were temporarily available on a developer platform. We stopped access to this data immediately after we have been [sic] informed. We are investigating the root cause as well as assessing our regulatory obligations.” Barth declined to say for what reason patient data was stored on a test environment, and if AstraZeneca has the technical means, such as logs, to determine if anyone accessed the data and what, if any, data was exfiltrated. Credentials, like usernames and passwords, that are exposed or inadvertently published to sites like GitHub are an increasingly common discovery for security researchers like SpiderSilk’s Hussein. In the past few years, the startup has discovered exposed data belonging to Samsung, the controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI; and the since-rebooted movie subscription MoviePass. In August, Hussein discovered credentials belonging to Microsoft employees that had been posted inadvertently to GitHub, which Microsoft owns. “This isn’t the first time we’ve come across leaked credentials put on Github by engineers due to human error, and it just keeps happening across the board,” Hussein told ZebethMedia. “The risk in these accidental leaks is that they occur randomly, and the exploitation path is often straightforward (i.e. making threat actors’ jobs easier).”

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Decentralized social network Mastodon grows to 655K users in wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Apps, elon buys twitter, mastodon, Social, TwitterNo Comments on Decentralized social network Mastodon grows to 655K users in wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover • ZebethMedia

Open-source, decentralized social network Mastodon has been benefiting from the chaotic Twitter takeover by Elon Musk. In addition to seeing a record number of downloads for the Mastodon mobile app this past weekend, the non-profit company today announced a new milestone. In a post on Twitter — where Mastodon has been successfully marketing its app to those now considering leaving the service — it noted that 230,000 people have joined Mastodon in the last week alone. Thanks to these new sign-ups as well as people returning to old accounts they had set up previously, the network now has 655,000 active users, the post noted. This is the highest number of users Mastodon has seen to date, Mastodon said. The number of people who switched over to #Mastodon in the last week alone has surpassed 230 thousand, along with many returning to old accounts bumping the network to over 655 thousand active users, highest it’s ever been! Why? 👉 — Mastodon (@joinmastodon) November 3, 2022 This follows the recent news that the open-source network had gained over 70,000 new sign-ups on Friday, Oct. 28 — the day after Musk’s deal to acquire Twitter had closed. From Friday through Sunday, the Mastodon mobile app also saw around 91,000 new installs, third-party data from Sensor Tower indicated — a 658% increase from the 12,000 installs it saw the three days prior. This rapid growth has not been without its downsides for the Twitter alternative, however. This week, one of the most popular servers on the Mastodon network, mastodon.social, has been experiencing lags and downtime as it struggled to accommodate the influx of new users. This could turn some people off from using Mastodon as their initial experience was sub-par. Though Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko has been working long hours to optimize the service and even ordered new hardware, the upgrade process has taken time at this crucial moment for Mastodon’s future. Often, when new users who try a service for the first time get frustrated by bugs and other issues, they don’t come back a second time. Plus, some users came to Mastodon without a full understanding of how a decentralized social network works and have found the process confusing or overly technical. Unlike on Twitter, or any other traditional social network, users don’t just create an account and start posting. They have to first pick a server to join as their Mastodon home. This is the part that causes people to stumble, as they don’t know where to find a server list, how to choose the right one, or whether or not they’re limited to chatting with people only on that server. This could also turn them off from exploring Mastodon further. It’s unfortunate because this is actually the key selling point for Mastodon — you join a server that best fits your interests. And by distributing the load across a network of servers, running Mastodon doesn’t require the infrastructure and engineering — or the massive amount of capital — that a network like Twitter does. That means Mastodon can be supported through smaller revenue streams, like sponsorships and donations, instead of ads. It also means Mastodon can’t be bought or sold to someone like Musk. Each Mastodon server is operated by a different individual or organization and can set its own moderation policies. But users aren’t limited to only communicating with friends on their own server — you can find and follow friends anywhere on the network. However, you can view your server’s timeline feed and the larger, “Federated” feed separately from your own Home feed of people you follow. This is particularly helpful if the server you’ve joined is filled with community members who post about things you’re interested in. There are a number of topic-based servers to choose from, too, to help with this. For example, some topic-based servers focus on areas like technology, music, gaming, art, activism, LGBTQ+, food, and more, in addition to general servers for socializing. This allows everyone to find their own niche. Of note, decentralization is the direction that Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is going with his new social networking protocol Bluesky, which now has over 30,000 sign-ups on its waitlist, pre-launch. A Bluesky mobile app will help people to connect using this technology in the days to come. But the open source community — including those who have been doing the hard work on Mastodon over the years — have been frustrated with the Silicon Valley exec’s decision to go his own way with Bluesky, instead of using established protocols like ActivityPub, which powers Mastodon and others. Soon, it seems, users will have to choose what sort of decentralized social networking future they want — or whether the action on Twitter, regardless of its owner, is too enticing to give up.

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Investor’s advice during a downturn: Don’t panic • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Airbase, Ramp, Ruth Foxe Blader, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments on Investor’s advice during a downturn: Don’t panic • ZebethMedia

How to compete without losing your mind — and your runway Competing in an increasingly crowded space can be nerve-wracking. Competing in an increasingly crowded space amid a challenging fundraising environment is even more nerve-wracking. We all know that cash is not nearly as readily available in 2022 as it was in 2021. This puts startups in the position of having to compete without losing their minds — or runway. At ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022, I interviewed Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, Airbase CEO Thejo Kote and Anthemis partner Ruth Foxe Blader on the topic. Glyman and Kote shared how they’re working to preserve capital, while Blader offered up some of the advice she’s giving to her portfolio companies. And she didn’t hold back. For the unacquainted, Glyman and Kote both run startups in the spend management space. As friendly competitors, they acknowledged that while the category is not a winner-takes-all one, it’s still important to differentiate and continuously innovate. Said Glyman: “One of the things that we’ve done in our business has been to look at the cost of acquisition — to fully earn back the cost deployed — and we’ve reduced that threshold,” he said. “And so our view is that we want to grow as fast as possible, but at a much faster tolerance — in that same way where you can earn higher yield elsewhere, applying that rigorous framework to where you choose to deploy capital. We think this is the right approach for this environment.” For Kote, it’s mostly about focus. Airbase, he noted, has historically targeted the mid-market and early enterprise space. He referenced “the crazy 2021 period where there was all the insanity around investment in this space,” with investors “willing to pay 100x, 200x multiples.” Rather than frantically try to change Airbase’s model to meet expectations, Kote said the startup kept operating the way it always had. “So a silver lining from a focus perspective coming into this year for us has been, ‘You know what? None of that matters,’” Kote said. “We were very focused on subscription revenue and high-margin subscription revenue and net ARR — not gross ARR. So we have really stuck to what we have always done, which is focused on the mid-market. And that meant that we freed up resources in a bunch of ways, giving us additional runway.” Meanwhile, Blader — whose firm invests at all stages of the life cycle — shared her belief that “this is a sentiment-driven industry, and when the music’s playing, everybody dances.” “The people who danced in 2021 and raised a bunch of capital – enough capital to hit breakeven with maybe a little bit of burn cutting, are probably feeling pretty good,” she said. “And the folks who really either under-raised or didn’t raise or raised capital at a valuation where they’re really not going to be able to close the gap between where multiples were and where they are now, are slightly panicked.”

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Treasury management startup Vesto wants to help other startups put their idle cash to work • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Fintech, StartupsNo Comments on Treasury management startup Vesto wants to help other startups put their idle cash to work • ZebethMedia

Benjamin Döpfner has been building companies since he was a teenager.  One of his more recent ventures was based in Berlin and at the time of its founding in 2019, Germany actually had negative interest rates – meaning that the company was paying back 50 basis points, or half a percent for each Euro that was in its account. “That was very, very frustrating for me,” Döpfner recalls. So he reached out to his bank, asking about a corporate treasury offering but was told it would not work with companies who were not able to deposit at least 100 million Euros. That frustration led the young entrepreneur in March of this year to start Vesto, a treasury management startup that aims to help other startups “manage, protect and extend their runway, instead of letting it sit idle in a checking account,” according to Döpfner. “Ideally, companies should never have a dollar of idle cash, yet there are trillions, floating around in near zero-interest checking accounts,” he told ZebethMedia. “We want to eliminate idle cash, and help companies put it to work.” Traditional banks have solutions, as do a few startups that have emerged over the recent years. But Döpfner argues that other alternatives are inflexible or risky and “come with big restraints.”   “Money is locked in a slow, stodgy institution with little visibility and poor customer service, along with sky-high account minimums, rendering the product unavailable to most,” he said. “Newer startups are tackling corporate treasury from a crypto angle, leaving company funds at strong risk, while others tie money up into ‘one-size-fits-all’ pooled accounts limiting control…with very little customization for companies” Vesto is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an investment advisor, is partnered with the Bank of NY Mellon.  “The interaction is similar to a robo advisor,” Döpfner said. “Kind of like a Betterment or Wealthfront for businesses. But our offering is actually much farther-ranging than just a robo advisor, as our investment selection and management process is very tailored and high-touch when compared to a robo experience.” Vesto so far has a couple of unnamed paying pilot customers under contract and according to Döpfner, is on track to see $100 million in assets under management by year’s end or early next year. Deposit sizes are generally higher, Döpfner added, with some amounting to $10 million or $20 million. The company is launching to the public today and announcing that it has raised $2.8M in a seed round led by Contrary Capital with participation from Susa Ventures, SV Angel, Coalition and “strategic” angels including the founders of SoFi, Tinder, DoNotPay and others. Vesto is partnered with the Bank of NY Mellon but interacts with its customers and serves as a manager of their investments after creating an investment proposal. “There’s a reporting layer, a control layer,” Döpfner said. “So that companies can understand what’s happening with their cash and have full visibility while not giving up control.” For example, he adds, companies are able to withdraw money anytime they want or need it. “Usually we’ll build a portfolio consisting of either US Treasuries or money market fund, or corporate bonds – -sometimes CDs” he explained. “We tried to really maximize safety, liquidity and then yield. We want to achieve good yields for customers but at the same time invest into low risk investment assets.” Image Credits: Vesto makes its money by charging a based fee, or cut of the amount of a  company’s deposit. Its target customers are Series A through Series D companies but in the longer term, wants to open up its offering to pre-seed stage companies to enterprise to small businesses and nonprofits. Looking ahead, Döpfner envisions going after the full financial stack. “Getting yield on cash is only one piece of the financial stack, and we want to cover the whole thing. Treasury is an ideal wedge because cash is the lifeblood of a startup. Every decision a startup makes can be traced back to how much runway they have, and that runway will be stored with,” Döpfner told ZebethMedia. “Corporate treasury – while a gigantic market – is simply the first step toward covering the rest of the stack.” Contrary Capital General Partner Will Robbins notes that some of his firm’s portfolio companies are “leaving several million dollars per year on the table by not putting idle cash to work more effectively.” “Especially in this fundraising environment, managing runway is critical, and Vesto has built the best product for doing that,” he wrote via email.  Other products treat corporate treasury as a “nice to have” feature, in Robbins’ view. “As great as big banks like First Republic or new entrants like Mercury are, founders just don’t get deep value from buying CDs or basic Treasury bills. Vesto’s mindset is focused on giving finance teams the power of a full asset manager in one software platform,” he said. “Companies like Apple and Airbnb famously manage their idle cash with ‘internal hedge funds’ and allowing every company to do the same is exciting.” My weekly fintech newsletter, The Interchange, launched on May 1! Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

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Darkroom brings high-end photo smarts to your iCloud Photo Library • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Gadgets, photo editorNo Comments on Darkroom brings high-end photo smarts to your iCloud Photo Library • ZebethMedia

It’s been around for a hot minute, but Darkroom just got a pretty major update that makes it a lot more interesting for photo enthusiasts who don’t want, or can’t afford, to use more specialist tools. The fast and intuitive photo editor gives you access to your photo library, essentially giving you a Lightroom-like experience natively on your phone or Mac. The company just introduced highlight and shadow recovery to its tool, which enables users to make the most of the ProRAW files captured by the latest-generation iPhones. In another recent update, the company added Preset Sharing, which makes it possible to create a stylistic edit you enjoy, and then share those edits with the world as a preset; much like a filter in Instagram, except customizable. Recovering details from “blown out” highlights or “overgrown” shadows is one of the primary reasons for shooting in RAW (as opposed to JPEG). The issue with JPEG, primarily, is that the file format discards a lot of the information the camera captured. Not a problem if you shoot perfect photos every time, but not great if your images need a bit of an edit. The functionality added to the tool adds five sliders that will seem familiar to users of high-end photography tools; Exposure, Whites, Highlights, Shadows and Blacks. “This is among our most consequential updates to Darkroom’s rendering engine since 2018 when we added RAW editing support,” notes Majd Taby, the co-founder of Darkroom.  The coolest thing about Darkroom — a boon for those who primarily shoot with their phones — is that the tool is specifically designed for managing and editing your existing iCloud Photo Library. It’s as fast and easy to use as the Photos app, with many of the same powerful features as Adobe’s Lightroom. The quirk: Because of the deep integration with the iOS ecosystem, you don’t have to import photos, or pay for storage in a second library. Darkroom is a free app, but certain premium features are available only to Darkroom+ customers, paying $30 per year or $5 per month for the additional features.

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Applications security startup Apiiro pulls in $100M Series B from A-list investors • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Apiiro, applications security, General Catalyst, Israeli startups, Security, StartupsNo Comments on Applications security startup Apiiro pulls in $100M Series B from A-list investors • ZebethMedia

At a time when large rounds are a thing of the past, especially in the early stages, Apiiro, an applications security startup, announced a $100 million Series B today from several top shelf Silicon Valley firms. What is attracting this kind of investment in a time when investors otherwise are in a period of belt tightening? The company is working to help developers and security operations find and solve issues that could result in vulnerabilities, and do so in a proactive manner, says company co-founder and CEO Idan Plotnik. “Developers and application security engineers today are literally overwhelmed with siloed tools, manual risk assessment processes and too many alerts with false positives without any context. Apiiro helps developers and application security engineers to proactively fix the most critical risks to the business with actionable context using one solution,” he explained. Unlike similar tools, Apiiro isn’t just checking the CI/CD pipeline or production for vulnerabilities, it starts at the design phase. “Before you start to code, at the design phase when you just create a user story with a new feature request, we analyze the text and raise a flag when a potential risky feature is requested,” he said. Beyond that, the company is aiming to be a set of guard rails for the development team as the application moves through design, building and production. What’s more, Plotnik says, it is not simply about pointing out potential vulnerabilities like Log4j, it’s finding the ones that could matter most to the team. That can help cut down on the noise and limit the number of fixes. “Let’s say in my code base that I have 5000 Log4j instances with a CVSS score (risk assessment score) of 10, but in your runtime you have only 100 of them and only 50 of them are actually exposed to the internet in a high business impact application. This is why we’re looking at context… to make sure developers fix only the most critical risks, ones that attackers can actually exploit,” Plotnik said. Quentin Clark, managing director at lead investor, General Catalyst, says that his firm invested this kind of money because security is a category that’s constantly changing and they saw a lot of potential here. “Security is one of these areas where you have to sort of rebuild the tooling to keep up with the changes in the development and operating platforms. So as the environment in which applications are being built changes so too must security tools, and so there’s an opportunity to go build a big important company here,” Clark told ZebethMedia. It probably doesn’t hurt that Plotnik reports that the company grew ARR 400% in the third quarter. The startup is up to 90 employees and it will be doubling in the coming year with the help of this substantial investment. He says that building a diverse workforce is one of the company’s five core values, and as he scales the company up, he is trying to adhere to that. “We proactively hire women, and we are also trying to train people to get into the software engineering and cybersecurity space [to expand the available pool of underrepresented applicants],” he said. Today’s $100 million round was led by General Catalyst with participation by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins. The company did not share the valuation. The total raised so far is $135 million, per Crunchbase. It’s worth noting that in September, Israeli business publication Globes, was reporting rumors that Palo Alto Networks was interested in buying the company for around $550 million. Last month Jewish Business News reported that the talks had broken down and the company was looking for additional funding.

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Amazon details Matter rollout for Alexa devices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Alexa, Amazon, Gadgets, Hardware, matter, SamsungNo Comments on Amazon details Matter rollout for Alexa devices • ZebethMedia

We’re still in the very early stages, but thus far Matter has proven to be a fairly peaceful collaboration between the biggest competitors in consumer electronics. Apple, Samsung and Google are among those that have detailed their plans to embrace the universal smart home standard following its recent launch. Today Amazon is offering some insight into its own approach. The company noted in a post this morning that 30 Echo and Eero devices are set to embrace the standard, accounting for around 100 million devices (give or take) across the globe. The company is starting the roll out with 17 Amazon devices (including Echos, plugs switches and bulbs), starting with an Android-based setup. That’s set for next month, with iOS availability following after and support for its Eero devices arriving at some point in early 2023. The company is also using the opportunity to announce Works with Alexa (WWA) for Matter devices, as a continued effort to ensure compatibility across devices. Amazon notes: As part of WWA for Matter requirements, devices will need to be Matter certified by the CSA, which if not already obtained can be started in parallel with the WWA certification process and maintaining the high quality bar customers rely on. For existing Works With Alexa certified devices that will receive over-the-air updates to support Matter and pass Matter certification, we will not require these devices to undergo re-certification. The company is also teaming with Samsung to simplifying the customer’s device setup experience using Alexa or SmartThings. Here’s Amazon again: This collaboration is built upon upcoming Alexa APIs enabling bi-directional multi-admin simple setup and Thread credential sharing for Matter devices. These cloud-based APIs are designed to make complex technology fade into the background, allowing customers to effortlessly add Matter devices to their preferred services, realizing Matter’s promise of simplifying our customers’ smart home experience.

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Stripe cuts 14% of its workforce, CEO says they ‘overhired for the world we’re in’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in Fintech, patrick collison, Startups, stripe, Stripe LayoffsNo Comments on Stripe cuts 14% of its workforce, CEO says they ‘overhired for the world we’re in’ • ZebethMedia

Stripe has announced that it’s laying off 14% of its workers, impacting around 1,120 of the fintech giant’s 8,000 workforce. The latest round of layoffs follows a string of cutbacks in the fintech sphere, with Brex last month revealing it was scything 11% of its workforce, while just yesterday Chime confirmed that 12% of its employees would be laid off. In a memo published online, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison conveyed a familiar narrative in terms of the reasons behind the latest cutbacks: a major hiring spree spurred by the world’s pandemic-driven surge toward ecommerce, a significant growth period, and then an economic downturn ridden with inflation, higher interest rates, and other macroeconomic challenges . “We overhired for the world we’re in, and it pains us to be unable to deliver the experience that we hoped that those impacted would have at Stripe,” Collison wrote. While there is never a perfect way to handle such a large-scale round of layoffs, Collison’s announcement is notable in terms of the degree to which he accepts blame for the situation, pointing to two specific mistakes the company’s leadership made. He wrote: In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether Stripe’s leadership made some errors of judgment. We’d go further than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we want to highlight them here since they’re important: We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown. We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success we’re seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep in. Today’s announcement perhaps doesn’t come as a huge surprise. While Stripe’s long-anticipated IPO remains in the balance, its own internal valuation reportedly dropped 28% from $95 billion last year to around $74 billion. And back in August, ZebethMedia learned of a smaller round of layoffs at Stripe, impacting a reported 45-55 workers at TaxJar, a tax compliance startup it acquired last year. In terms of severance, Collison noted that all those impacted would receive at 14 weeks worth of pay, depending on time served at the company. On to top of that, he noted said that Stripe will pay the full 2022 annual bonus irrespective of when each employee leaves, though it will be pro-rated if they only joined this year. Additionally, he said that all unused paid time off (PTO) will be paid, and Stripe will provide healthcare coverage for six months following each departure.

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More than 70 VC firms join VCs for Repro coalition to support reproductive rights • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on Posted in EC venture capital, Politics, roe v wade, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments on More than 70 VC firms join VCs for Repro coalition to support reproductive rights • ZebethMedia

Seventy-five venture capital firms, including Bloomberg Beta, 776, and M13, are standing together to launch VCs for Repro, a coalition stating that criminalizing abortion is a violation of human rights that stifles innovation. Announced today, the group seeks to entice more financial leaders to support and vote in favor of reproductive rights come the midterm elections on November 8. “Criminalizing abortion violates human rights and is anti-innovation.This matters to the people investing in the future of our economy. Vote like it matters to you on November 8, 2022,” VCs for Repro’s statement read. The group was started by Backstage Capital general partner Christie Pitts, Synastry Capital president Janna Meyrowitz Turner, Amboy Street Ventures founding partner Carli Sapir, Coyote Ventures co-founder Jessica Karr, and VEST Her Ventures founder Erika Lucas. “There is the outdated pressure for VCs to have to toe the line … about where they stand on abortion.” Simmone Taitt, founder, Poppy Seed Health Speaking to ZebethMedia, Pitts and Turner said progressives within the investment community need to start better utilizing their economic and cultural prowess to shift and shape society. For a long time, people have been silent and afraid to speak up. Their hope is that changes today. “The venture community has a tremendous opportunity for socioeconomic impact,” Turner told ZebethMedia. “They determine which entrepreneurs and ideas get funded, which problems get to be tackled, and whose experience is centered in those business models. Our hope for the coalition is that it inspires those in positions of leadership to find their voice right now. And then to follow that with action.” Lucas added that there is little that determines a woman’s life and career trajectory more than whether she can prevent and plan pregnancies. She said that abortion restrictions hamper the nation’s talent mobility, diminish workforce participation, depress earning potential, and can even drive families into poverty. “I’m hopeful this movement puts pressure on business and civic leaders to see that restricting abortion access is not just a moral or social issue, is an economic issue,” she told ZebethMedia. Already, the reversal of Roe v. Wade is making waves throughout the startup and venture ecosystem.

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