After six months in stealth mode, Trava makes its public debut today, and I couldn’t be more excited to announce it. While reflecting on our progress since the company’s founding in May, I was struck by how far we’ve come in such a short time. We’ve built an impressive product that combines both form and function. We’ve built a stellar team whose daily hustle makes it possible for me to dream big as the company’s CEO. And we’ve built a brand that places customers and partners at the center of everything we do. After all, they were the inspiration for Trava’s mission, and we aim to make them proud. Introducing Trava …
Imagine: You own a small-but-growing e-commerce business. Your livelihood depends on being able to sell goods and process transactions online—even the smallest interruption could mean lost revenue and spell disaster for your company. You’re aware that cyber threats are real, but you don’t know the first thing about assessing cybersecurity or protecting your business from cyber risks. What do you do?
Or maybe you run an early-stage software company and are about to land your first enterprise customer. In order to close the deal, you need to complete a lengthy security questionnaire that you don’t know how to answer. Where do you start?
Now imagine: You’re running a successful IT managed services firm with a healthy client roster, but you want to expand your service offerings. Your clients routinely ask you about improving their cybersecurity postures, but your firm doesn’t specialize in cybersecurity work. How can you provide more value to your clients?
Or maybe you already provide expert security services as part of your offerings, but you’re looking for ways to offer even more protection. How do you help your clients address cyber risk that can’t be mitigated with security programs?
The answer (to all of the above): Trava.
Trava exists to protect small and midsize businesses from the potential damage of cyber threats. By integrating assessment, mitigation, and insurance into one, convenient cyber risk management platform, Trava enables business owners and IT professionals to operate secure, productive businesses without fear of interruption or loss caused by cyber incidents. Whether you run a business or provide support services to small and mid-market clients, Trava can help you manage cyber risk in a new—and better—way.
Why Trava?
There are a lot of cybersecurity tools and service providers out there. There are also a lot of insurance companies. What there aren’t a lot of are holistic cyber risk management solutions that provide end-to-end protection for business owners and IT professionals who don’t have extensive risk management experience themselves. Trava simplifies the entire cyber risk management process with automated vulnerability assessments, hands-on consulting services, and robust cyber insurance coverage for complete risk protection without the hassle of becoming a security expert yourself.
The idea for Trava was born out of a recognition that the current approach to cyber risk management is broken. Costs are going up, but breaches and incidents aren’t going down. The status quo is too disjointed, too expensive, too difficult to manage. And most solutions only solve part of the cyber risk problem, leaving companies exposed to threats they haven’t identified, issues they haven’t mitigated, or residual risk they haven’t transferred to an insurance policy in order to protect their financial assets.
Our mission is to make cyber risk management so simple (and affordable) that all small and midsize companies can protect themselves from cyber threats and stay in business over the long term. We’re doing that by building an integrated platform that automates vulnerability assessment to identify key security issues. Once we’ve uncovered what issues need to be addressed, we give customers recommendations on how to address them. If they need help shoring up their security postures, Trava’s expert team can advise on how to mitigate vulnerabilities or refer them to specialized service providers to do the work. And for any cyber risk that remains after our customers have taken the necessary mitigation steps, Trava offers cyber insurance policies tailored to each company’s specific needs to ensure their assets are safe.
The best part? Because we’re integrating the key components of a strong cyber risk management program into one platform, we’ll be able to use powerful data analytics to predict loss probabilities and impacts, which will allow us to offer lower cyber insurance premiums so customers get more protection for less.
For our service provider partners, Trava’s comprehensive protection enables them to add more value for their clients and generate additional revenue without carrying the overhead of creating an entirely new line of business on their own.
Why “Trava?”
The name “Trava” comes from the word “travatura,” which is Italian for truss. When we considered the ways in which Trava bridges the gaps among the pillars of cyber risk management—as well as between companies needing cybersecurity help and service providers who can offer it—we couldn’t think of a better metaphor than a structural element serving as connective tissue to strengthen and protect.
We Are Trava
Our team is small but mighty—and growing quickly. Experienced security professionals, engineering experts, insurance brokers, and specialists in sales, marketing, and design form the core team, which I lead along with my co-founder, Rob Beeler.
Before starting Trava, I spent two decades teaching college-level courses on cybersecurity and risk management before moving into corporate information security and governance at ExactTarget and then Salesforce. I also served as a task force officer on the FBI’s Cyber Crime Task Force, working to identify and stop some of the most dangerous cyber criminals.
Rob’s experience comes from nearly 30 years as an engineering leader with Carbonite, OpenText, Double-Take Software, and NSI Software, where he helped build the company from startup to public offering. In his current role as CTO, he’s focused on building the team, processes, and engineering culture to help Trava create world-class products.
We’re joined by strategic partners and investors from High Alpha and TDF Ventures, giving us all the support we could ask for to solve this important problem.
Together, our team is ready and equipped to tackle the challenge of protecting small and medium-sized businesses from cyber threats. As we celebrate our official company launch, we look to the future—here’s to better cyber risk management for all.
– Jim Goldman, CEO and Co-Founder
