Poppy Gustafsson: the Darktrace tycoon in new cybersecurity period

Poppy Gustafsson runs a cutting-edge and gender-diverse cybersecurity agency on the point of a £3bn inventory market debut, however she is completely satisfied to reference popular culture traditional the Terminator to assist describe what Darktrace truly does.

Launched in Cambridge eight years in the past by an unlikely alliance of mathematicians, former spies from GCHQ and the US and synthetic intelligence (AI) specialists, Darktrace gives safety, enabling companies to remain one step forward of more and more smarter and harmful hackers and viruses.

Advertising and marketing its merchandise because the digital equal of the human physique’s capacity to struggle sickness, Darktrace’s AI-security works as an “enterprise immune system”, can “self-learn and self-heal” and has an “autonomous response functionality” to deal with threats with out instruction as they’re detected.

“It actually does really feel like we’re on this new period of cybersecurity,” says Gustafsson, the chief government of Darktrace. “The arms race will completely proceed, I actually don’t assume it’s very lengthy till this [AI] innovation will get into the palms of attackers, and we are going to see these very extremely focused and particular assaults that people gained’t essentially be capable of spot and defend themselves from.

“It’s not going to be these futuristic Terminator-style robots out taking pictures one another, it’s going to be all these little items of code preventing within the background of our companies. In my time right here at Darktrace, I’ve seen attackers strive [to] use issues like Teslas parked within the workplace automobile park, [internet-connected] fish tanks in casinos, and fingerprint scanners on the doorways of warehouses, all as a kind of new and novel method into companies.”

Gustafsson was 30 years previous when she co-founded Darktrace in 2013, and her star has ascended in tandem with the corporate’s rise from promising tech startup to uncommon British “unicorn” to record on the London inventory market within the coming months. Whereas Gustafsson is prone to be value no less than £20m from the flotation of the enterprise, which has virtually 5,000 prospects starting from the NHS to Coca-Cola, she has additionally turn into one thing of a gender variety champion within the male-dominated tech world.

Darktrace employs greater than 1,500 workers globally, of which 40% are feminine – together with at administration stage – a rarity in opposition to an business common of simply 15%. A uncommon tweeter, the final submit nonetheless lingering on the high of her Twitter feed references how “proud” the corporate was of its gender variety marking Worldwide Ladies’s Day.

“It’s solely one thing I’m conscious of once I’m doing interviews or once I’m at an business occasion and abruptly you see a sea of males staring again at you,” she has beforehand stated.

By design or not, Gustafsson, who was awarded an OBE final yr for her contribution to cybersecurity, has proved to be one thing of a gender stereotype-breaker for a lot of her life.

She grew up in Cambridgeshire, the place her father ran an agricultural gross sales enterprise and her mom was a journalist for Farmers Weekly. After attending Hinchingbrooke secondary college – alumni embody Oliver Cromwell and Samuel Pepys, and Wolf Corridor creator Hilary Mantel was patron of its 450th anniversary – she took a maths diploma on the College of Sheffield, the place her first scholar job was constructing kitchen cupboards. She then certified as an accountant at Deloitte earlier than working for Amadeus Capital, the enterprise capital agency run by ARM Holdings founder Hermann Hauser. In 2009, she moved to Mike Lynch’s Autonomy, a enterprise that may turn into inextricably intertwined with Darktrace, for a two-year stint, earlier than the cybersecurity firm was born.

In February, former residence secretary Amber Rudd, who sits on Darktrace’s advisory board alongside former MI5 director common Lord Evans of Weardale and CIA veteran Alan Wade, penned a bit asking “how we are able to discover the longer term Poppy Gustafsson and extra like her” in male-dominated science, tech, engineering and arithmetic. She additionally complained that regardless of the female-led success of Darktrace, when the corporate is written about, “the one identify that appears to get talked about is the founder, Mike Lynch. It’s as if girls don’t get to run their very own present.”

The issue is that Lynch, whose Invoke Capital was Darktrace’s first and largest shareholder, has all the time had a major affect on the enterprise. The Autonomy co-founder is preventing extradition to the US, the place he’s accused of fraudulently inflating the worth of the corporate earlier than its £8.4bn sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Lynch, who might face a most jail sentence of 25 years if discovered responsible, denies any wrongdoing.

Darktrace was constructed from ex-Autonomy workers, together with Gustafsson, and in 2018 it was subpoenaed by US authorities for details about Invoke, warning there was a danger of money-laundering claims if its backing cash included money from the Autonomy sale. Darktrace says its legal responsibility on this regard is “low-risk” in IPO registration paperwork.

To create distance, Lynch stepped down from Darktrace’s board in 2018. Nonetheless, he remained on its advisory council till final month, when he moved to a newly created science and expertise council. Final yr, Darktrace used $127m of a mortgage from a number of current traders to scale back Invoke’s share holding. Lynch, along with his spouse, Angela Bacares, at the moment owns 19% of Darktrace, value as a lot as £570m when the corporate floats.

Gustafsson has for probably the most half remained tight-lipped about her former boss, the monetary backer instrumental in her rise at Darktrace, rejecting the concept that London might have been chosen over the US for a flotation due to Lynch’s state of affairs.

“No, under no circumstances,” is all she’s going to say.

Gustafsson, whose selection of transport is a canary yellow Vespa and has stated her one remorse is just not placing extra time into studying the piano, is laser-focused on making certain Darktrace has a legacy all its personal.

“It actually seems like we’re simply getting began,” she says. “We’ve by no means been proud of simply kind of following the established order and doing issues, , 2% higher than the final product. We’re by no means going to be completely satisfied to be an organization simply following within the footsteps of others.”