Cyber Resilience: The Cornerstone of Business Continuity in the AI Era

Written By Mel Shakir

AI has changed the tempo of cyber risk. Phishing kits personalize on the fly, ransomware moves at machine speed, and “double extortion” means the damage doesn’t end with encryption. In this environment, prevention alone is no longer a sufficient strategy. The new mandate for CISOs and risk leaders is resilience—the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover, and adapt so the business keeps running even while an incident unfolds.

Why resilience, and why now?

  1. Attack velocity has outpaced human triage. If your controls depend on cloud round-trips, batched updates, or an analyst in the loop, today’s ransomware will outrun them.

  2. Availability is not the same as recoverability. You can be “up” and still be untrustworthy if identity, endpoints, data, or policies are corrupted.

  3. Boards are asking continuity questions. The language has shifted from “How do we stop everything?” to “How fast can we restore a known-good state and contain business impact?”

Two numbers anchor that conversation: RTO (how quickly you must restore) and RPO (how much data/config you can afford to lose). If you can’t hit those targets for identity, endpoints, data, and critical SaaS, you’re not resilient—no matter your detection stack.

Dreamit’s Focus on Cyber Resilience

At Dreamit Ventures, we invest in cybersecurity companies tackling the world’s hardest problems. Recognizing resilience as a board-level priority, we recently invested in two companies redefining how enterprises defend against and recover from ransomware:

  • Upsight Security — Ransomware Resilience on the Endpoint. Ransomware crews increasingly favor exfiltration-first campaigns that monetize stolen data even if encryption is contained. Classic EPP/EDR that leans on cloud analysis or batch updates can leave decision-time gaps that modern ransomware exploits. Resilience takeaway: UpSight pushes real-time decisioning to the asset for automatic rollback to pre-attack state—seconds matter.

  • Acsense — Cloud IAM Resilience. Okta and Microsoft Entra offer stellar uptime, but under the shared-responsibility model you own the integrity of your tenant’s configs and data. Resilience means you can roll identity back to a known-good state in minutes—even after ransomware or a bad change poisons groups, policies, or app mappings. If you can’t prove your IAM RTO/RPO in drills (across identity, endpoints, and SaaS), you’re not resilient—you’re just available.

Portco Updates

Noteworthy updates or achievements from Dreamit Ventures' portfolio companies.

  • Tidal Cyber - Threat Informed Defense Platform: Raised $10M in Series A led by Bright Pixel Capital to accelerate development of its threat-led defense platform, helping organizations move beyond checklist security to defend against real adversary behavior. Founded by former MITRE experts, Tidal Cyber aims to operationalize the MITRE ATT&CK framework so companies can measure and improve their security posture with greater precision. Read the press release.

  • AccuKnox - AI Powered Zero Trust CNAPP: Awarded US Patent #12,242,629 for its runtime security innovation that correlates kernel-level events in real time (using eBPF, etc.) to detect/prevent anomalous behavior without sacrificing performance. This patent reinforces AccuKnox’s position in protecting modern cloud-native, container, edge, and VM workloads with high fidelity security, helping customers meet compliance and operational security needs. Read the press release.

  • Bricklayer AI - Selected for the prestigious Engage Accelerator Program by Tech Square Ventures, joining a cohort backed by Fortune 500 leaders like Coca-Cola, Delta, Goldman Sachs, and The Home Depot. The program will help Bricklayer scale its autonomous AI cybersecurity platform by connecting with top corporate partners across sectors from aviation to healthcare.

  • Congratulations to TestifySec and AccuKnox on being selected by Carahsoft, the leading government IT solutions aggregator. TestifySec enables automated governance and compliance aligned with NIST 800-204D and Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) guidance, while AccuKnox delivers a Zero Trust CNAPP platform. This partnership expands their reach into the public sector, helping agencies strengthen security and compliance at scale.

Upcoming Events

Key events where cybersecurity startups, investors, and corporate partners can meet the Dreamit team.

October 1st - DMV Founders & Funders Happy Hour

November 4th - Datatribe Cyber Innovation Day

  • The Dreamit team will be there, and is proud to support as a participating venture firm.

November 5th & 6th - Accelerate Investor Conference

  • Drew Hunt will serve as an investor judge in their pitch competition.

Founders can always reach us via our website Get Started page.

About Dreamit

Here’s a quick look at how we invest:

  • Focus: Early-stage startups in cybersecurity

  • Stage: Seed (U.S. & Israel)

  • Check Size: $500K-$1.5M initial with follow-on reserves

  • How We Help: Deep security expertise + a vast partner network; Customer Sprints drive traction, Investor Sprints unlock capital

  • What We Look For: Exceptional founders with early PMF—revenue, pilots/design partners, or strong adoption signals.

Since 2008, Dreamit has $150M AUM and invested in 300+ companies across four funds and multiple industries. Today, Dreamit is investing out of Fund IV, and has made 35 investments in category-defining cybersecurity companies.

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Want to Chat? Reach out to us!

Startups: Submit a slide deck or get in touch with us via our Get Started page.

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General Inquiries - Contact Us

Mel Shakir
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Why IAM High Availability Isn't Resiliency—and Why Your Enterprise Needs Both