Best Week, Worst Week: Cyber firm gets boost to ‘hack the hackers’; Impallaria could face censure after lawsuit dismissed

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A Bowie cybersecurity firm got a huge financial boost this week for its products that actively target cybercriminals while a Maryland delegate saw his defamation claim rejected by a judge and now could face censure for his actions.

Business writer Tim Curtis reported Monday that Bowie-based startup Trinity Cyber raised $23 million in Series A funding, which would have been the third-highest raised by a Maryland startup during the first half of the year, according to PwC’s quarterly MoneyTree report.

Co-founder and CEO Steve Ryan’s business model for his cyberdefense plan focuses on going after the “bad guys” rather than placing the blame for every attack on users who made a mistake. Unlike most traditional cybersecurity options, which react to known threats, Trinity works to intercept attacks by disrupting hackers while they are trying to get into a system. That approach caught the eye of Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel Corporation, which led the Series A round of funding.

Trinity Cyber plans to use the infusion of capital to expand its infrastructure and workforce as part of its plan to “hack the hackers.” The company has also brought in former White House official Tom Bossert to its management team as chief strategy officer, who most recently under President Donald Trump as a White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser and is a national security analyst for ABC news. Bossert was drawn to Trinity Cyber’s approach of developing a truly preventive solution to stopping cybercriminals.

Meanwhile, Del. Richard “Rick” Impallaria’s week went from bad to potentially worse as his defamation claim filed against four Republican Party officials was dismissed by a judge and now the GOP delegate representing parts of Baltimore and Harford counties could face censure proceedings for his court actions.

Government affairs writer Bryan P. Sears reported Thursday the delegate was a no-show in Baltimore County Circuit Court as Judge Jan Alexander issued a second order dismissing the case, saying Impallaria’s claim was legally insufficient and its key piece of evidence — a video recording of a meeting — was likely illegally made.

Impallaria filed the lawsuit alleging he was defamed when the four members of the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee — Al Mendelsohn, Joshua Wolf, Bradley Lang and J. Michael Collins — discussed a possible reprimand based on Impallaria’s past legal problems and his campaign’s connection to an illegal robocall. The discussion was based on an editorial and news reports previously published in The Baltimore Sun.

On Friday, Abingdon Del. Chris Biggs asked a legislative ethics panel to censure Impallaria for his court actions, one of the most severe forms of punishment on a sitting state delegate. In two separate filings with the committee, Biggs alleges Impallaria filed the defamation suit in retaliation for an earlier complaint to the ethics committee and complains that Impallaria misused his official title when he filed one of his defamation lawsuits. He asked the committee to censure Impallaria for his lawsuit against him “to indicate that it is the will of the General Assembly to not allow citizens to be intimidated by threats of legal action when they shine a light on activity that violates the letter or the spirit of the ethics article.”