Plurilock Security (PLUR.V) is a $34 million cybersecurity company that “reduces or eliminates the need for passwords by measuring the pace, rhythm and cadence of a user’s keystrokes to confirm their identity.”
PLUR began trading a year ago on the Canadian Venture Exchange. The share price has roughly doubled over that time frame, from .26 to .58.
New tech companies typically have a long hard slog to revenues. In the Equity Guru universe, we’re tracking 7-year-old tech companies still trying to bag a 1st-paying-customer.
Plurilock already has multiple revenue streams from big-ass U.S. gov. customers.
On October 7, 2021, PLUR received a US$133,000 order from the U.S. Marshals Service and a US$193,000 order from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as part the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) program, a U.S. Government-Wide Acquisition Contract Vehicle (GWAC).
The U.S. Marshals Service is a part of the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as the enforcement arm of the federal courts.
The U.S. DEA is a federal law enforcement agency, tasked with enforcing controlled substances laws and regulations.
Two days ago, on October 5, 2021, Plurilock announced a US$208,000 order from the U.S. Department of the Navy as part the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) program, a U.S. Government-Wide Acquisition Contract Vehicle (GWAC).
On August 23, 2021 PLUR received a $1.08 million USD purchase order from the US Air Force as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) program.
On August 19, PLUR received a USD$794,000 purchase order from a California state healthcare agency under the NASPO ValuePoint program.
August 11, 2021 PLUR received an order from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for $140,000 USD.
On July 15, 2021 PLUR received a US$1.7 million order with the U.S. Department of Defense.
…etc…
All contracts and orders announced by Plurilock since April 2021, including the latest order, represent a combined total of roughly US$12.23 million in sales.
To put that in perspective, Plurilock’s 6-month sales are about 35% of its market cap.
Plurilock will provide maintenance support on existing software licenses to the U.S. Department of the Navy. This new order aligns with Plurilock’s stated goal to expand within the government vertical.
Tech Breakthrough holds an annual, international competition that honors top companies for their innovations in the cybersecurity industry.
On September 30, 2021, Plurilock announced that it was selected by Tech Breakthrough for its “Authentication Solution of the Year” for its high-margin, proprietary DEFEND continuous authentication product
The awards recognize achievements in several categories including cloud security, mobile security, risk management, and identity management.
In 2021, the awards program received over 4,000 nominations across the categories this year, and previous winners include Fortinet, McAfee, LastPass, and LexisNexis.
“We are honored to be a recipient of the Authentication Solution of the Year award from Tech Breakthrough,” said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. “Our DEFEND product is unique in its ability to continuously authenticate users throughout the workday without friction, addressing the critical need for advanced identity assurance in light of the growing cyber threat and incidence of cyber attacks. This award serves to further validate our work, being named alongside several big players in the cybersecurity space.”
In the October 1, 2021 video below, Paterson talks about Plurilock’s business objectives within the context of the Colonial Pipeline hack.
“What wasn’t immediately publicized around the Colonial attack was that the way the bad guys got in was through a compromised password,” stated Paterson, “This could be from stealing a password, but could also be from the bad guys guessing an easy-to-guess password.”
“Plurilock is designed to empower our customers to defend against attacks exactly like this,” added Paterson, “The level of sophistication on behalf of the cyber attackers is increasing. And the economic incentives for those attacks are also increasing.”
“A typical cyber attack is going to be divided up into a couple of different phases,” explained Paterson, “There is an initial phase where the attackers are looking to get access to the company systems. That might be from a stolen password, as we saw with the Colonial example, it might also be that they exploit an unpatched server somewhere.”
“Once those attackers get in, they’ll seek to establish persistence, which means they want to be able to come and go as they please, from there, they’ll start to expand laterally, they’ll start to do reconnaissance throughout the network,” continued Paterson, “What are the sensitive systems? What is the sensitive data that they can take action on either steal or encrypt with ransomware?”
Today, organizations are trying to solve for this entire attack chain. And what Plurilock is focused on doing is those first two initial phases. We’re looking to prevent people from getting in to begin with, and we’re also looking to prevent them from being able to gain persistence and then move laterally.
If we can do that, then that means that those attackers, even if they do figure out a way in are still prevented from acting on or conducting any damage.” – Ian Paterson CEO of Plurilock
“Traditional defenses against cybersecurity hacks are called Multi Factor Authentication (MFA),” continued Paterson, “It’s a way of proving an identity to a computer when you login. A password is an example that. You type in a secret, a shared secret, like a password, or it could be a pin number. And that proves your identity to the computer. That typically will happen a couple of times per day. Our view is that this whole interaction could be made a lot more secure, if we’re able to extend the time where we’re checking the identity of the user”.
“Plurilock Defend provides continuous authentication based on your behavior, how you type on the keyboard and move a mouse, we’re constantly checking to make sure that you are in fact, the right person continuously throughout the day”.
“We closed a sale a couple weeks ago with a large overseas financial institution. They were they were principally concerned with remote workers. They wanted to make sure that they had good confidence that it was the right remote worker because they weren’t coming into the office. They found that using our system, they could detect an intruder within a minute, based purely on their keyboard and mouse behavior”, concluded Paterson.
In the Equity Guru Roundtable Chris Parry and other EG writers weigh in on the pros and cons of Plurilock.
August 27, 2021, PLUR released Q2, 2021 Financial Highlights
- Total revenue for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, was $8,604,310 and $8,680,071 respectively ($79,512 and $182,851 over the same periods in the prior fiscal year). The increase in revenue is due to the acquisition of Aurora Systems Consulting Inc. (“Aurora”) in the Solutions Division.
- Hardware sales revenues accounted for 88.1% and 87.3% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively (0% for both the periods in 2020) of total revenues. Hardware sales revenue was the new revenue stream added to the Company after the acquisition of Aurora.
- Hardware sales revenue was $7,581,208 for both the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively. No revenue was recorded under this category in prior year.
- Electronic software license and maintenance sales revenue was $738,054 and $805,810 for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively, compared to $79,512 and $163,480 over the same periods in the prior year.
- Professional services sales revenue was $285,048 and $293,053 for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively, compared to nil and $19,371 over the same periods in the prior year.
- Adjusted EBITDA was $(985,142) and $(2,041,539) for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively, compared to $(482,375) and $(1,037,749) over the same periods in the prior year.
- Cash & cash equivalents on June 30, 2021, was $4,977,387 compared to $1,721,179 on December 31, 2020.
- Cash used in operating activities for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021 was $418,094 and $1,576,549, compared to $321,435 and $518,543 during the same periods in the prior fiscal year.
Q2, 2021 Operational Highlights
- On April 13, 2021, Wells Fargo Bank outstanding LOC totalling US$500,000 was repaid in full.
- On April 27, 2021, Aurora’s Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loan obtained from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) loan including US$199,830 in principal and US$2,053.81 in interest was forgiven.
- On April 27, 2021, Plurilock filed two additional U.S. provisional patent applications for new advancements in continuous authentication technology.
- On May 9, 2021, the Company filed a preliminary short form base shelf prospectus which when made final and effective, will enable Plurilock to offer, issue and sell up to $50 million of common shares, warrants, subscription receipts, debt securities and units.
- On June 28, 2021, the Company released a new Splunk® SIEM application for its DEFEND continuous authentication product.
- During Q2 2021 the Company announced US$3,319,000 of new orders and contracts which included a US$1.15 million order with the U.S. Department of the Navy under National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (“NASA”) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (“SEWP”), United States Government-Wide Acquisition Contract Vehicle (“GWAC”) that was announced on May 7, 2021.
On March 29, 2021 PLUR announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of Aurora Systems Consulting – a provider of advanced cybersecurity technology and services based in California.
Key Aurora Highlights
- Revenue of US$28.1 million (CAD$35.8 million) in 2020
- Gross Margin of US$1.4M in 2020
- Diversified client base consisting of over 140 tier-1 organizations
- Numerous prominent master service agreements with state and federal agencies in the United States
Aurora’s margins are low (4.9% of revenue) but the kicker here for Plurilock is that Aurora has big customers – like the U.S. Department of Defense – and an existing high-performance sales team.
“With the increased cyber threat and incidence of cyber attacks from non-friendly nation-states, having experienced cybersecurity and IT support vendors are critical for U.S. defense organizations,” stated Plurilock on October 6, 2021, “The number of significant nation-state cyber attacks doubled between 2017 and 2020, and supply chain attacks saw a 78% rise in 2019.”
This tiny tech company is has significant revenues from big U.S. gov clients.
Full Disclosure: Plurilock is an Equity Guru marketing client.