Si vis pacem, para bellum is an old Latin adage that translates: if you want peace, prepare for war.
For Richmond Hill, Ont.-based cybersecurity startup Parabellyx, the maxim sits at the core of both its name and its strategy.
“Businesses don’t want to have 85 percent accuracy in their security testing; they want to get as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible.”
Alexander Poizner, Parabellyx
The ‘war,’ in this case, is digital. The systems companies rely on do not sit still, and although a penetration test may be rigorous when it is performed, by the time a report circulates, parts of the security environment may have already shifted. Still, the industry continues to treat that annual report as the standard measure of security.
“We think that in the next few years, penetration testing is going to die off,” said Parabellyx CEO and co-founder Alexander Poizner. “Why? Because it’s only a snapshot in time.”
Parabellyx’s platform is designed to replace point-in-time testing with continuous discovery, validation, and precise remediation guidance. Today, the founders are navigating a different kind of battlefield: positioning themselves for growth against established competitors.
The co-founders’ history together dates back over a decade. Poizner, CTO and co-founder Eric Matthews, and chief revenue officer Effi Lipsman previously worked together at IntelliGO Networks, a managed detection and response company that was acquired by ActZero in 2020.
Poizner and Matthews reunited in 2017 to launch a boutique offensive security firm, serving governments, manufacturers, technology firms, and financial institutions. That experience gave them a view of the limited reliability of point-in-time penetration testing.
“Businesses don’t want to have 85 percent accuracy in their security testing; they want to get as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible,” Poizner said.
Parabellyx’s answer is Luma, a platform designed to make security testing an always-on process. Instead of providing one annual report, Luma scans a company’s systems on an ongoing basis, identifies vulnerabilities, and checks whether those weaknesses can actually be exploited. Parabellyx layers in additional analysis and human reviews to reduce false alarms and missed risks, as well as AI to further enrich remediation guidance and reporting.
“We’re using some industry standard tooling, but it’s also augmented by professionals,” said Matthews. “Our goal here is really to provide a broader coverage for those mid-market companies at a level that they can afford and understand.”
Parabellyx has grown steadily over the last few years, building a base of platform customers and increasing its annual recurring revenue year over year. But the shift from being a service company to a product company means going up against large, enterprise vendors with global sales teams and established brands.
“One of the biggest obstacles that we’re facing, frankly, is we’ve got limited funding, limited reach,” said Lipsman. “From a go-to-market perspective, reach is something that we are trying to solve.”
The founders also face a subtler risk: becoming too close to their own product.
“You can be so focused on solving something that you may become biased,” Poizner said. “If you are a startup, and you have a good idea, and you have people that are on your board, sooner or later, they’re going to become indoctrinated by your way of thinking. So you need independent observers and advisors.”
That need for perspective recently led Parabellyx to join the Cyber Challenge.
Alexander Poizner, Parabellyx
“You can be so focused on solving something that you may become biased.”
The Cyber Challenge is a free program from Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst delivered in partnership with the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange (CCTX) and supported in part by the Government of Ontario, designed to help Ontario-based startups tackle industry-specific obstacles and transition them into market-ready solutions across seven key sectors: automotive, smart infrastructure, mining, law enforcement, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences.
Parabellyx joined the program last month and was quickly accelerated to its second phase, which involves an intensive cycle of mentorship and curated programming. During this phase of the challenge, companies work closely with industry experts to refine go-to-market strategies, strengthen their sales messaging, and address complex technical challenges. Participating companies also receive $20,000 in non-dilutive funding through the Cyber Challenge.
And while it’s still early days in the program, Poizer said initial conversations have already been valuable. In one session with eSentire founder and Cyber Challenge advisor Eldon Sprickerhoff, the Parabellyx team sought feedback on the company’s approach to deploying AI for security testing.
“After that, personally, I felt much more confident in terms of what we’re doing and all the decisions that we had made in the last two years,” Poizner added.
Parabellyx is entering the program with 15 team members, $1.3 million USD in annual recurring revenue, and over 50 customers. Now, its focus is on turning its early traction into even faster growth.
“How do we tell a better story? How do we reach prospective customers faster? How do we compete with much larger organizations that might have an army of salespeople and are able to do any conference and trade shows that their heart desires? How do we do that when we’re bootstrapped?” Lipsman said.
The startup’s co-founders believe the Cyber Challenge offers a setting to work through those questions with experienced operators. For a company built on preparing other businesses for war, it’s now ready to apply that discipline inward.
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To learn more about the Cyber Challenge and innovation programming at the Catalyst, visit cybersecurecatalyst.ca.
Feature image courtesy Rogers Cybersecurity Catalyst.