Two months ago, white hat hacker Leon Juranić sold his cyber security company Defense Code, which he founded 12 years ago 'with one laptop and a lot of will', to the global leader in the niche, the Israeli company WhiteSource.
Now he has announced that, after more than 20 years of experience in the field of cyber security and after co-founding a cyber security company at the age of 21 that is still operating today, and founding Defense Code at the age of 25, which he recently successfully sold, he is ready 'to give something back to the community and invest in innovative early-stage cyber security startups’.
Why did he decide to do this? – The reason is very simple, to give some new kids a chance and the mentorship that I never had – says Juranić for Lider.
The size of the investment will depend on the idea itself, the level of project development, and its assessment of how original and ultimately profitable the idea is. When it comes to what interests him, Juranić says: 'Everything that falls under cyber security.'
Let us recall, the Israeli company WhiteSource acquired the Croatian DefenseCode, a company founded and led by Juranić, to which Lucijan Carić later joined as an investor. Juranić founded DefenseCode in 2015, known as a top expert in the field of information security, especially in application protection and their source code.
WhiteSource is a leader in application security and is expanding towards companies for custom code security and the availability of solutions for static application security testing (SAST). The entire DefenseCode team, led by Juranić, who is now the Security Research Team Lead, joined WhiteSource after the acquisition. When asked about the future, Juranić says: 'I definitely see myself at WhiteSource'.
Juranić became known to the wider public when he discovered security vulnerabilities in NASA’s computer system. In the software developed for space missions, he identified 12 security vulnerabilities through which someone could have accessed NASA’s critical systems for space missions, for which they publicly thanked him on their website.
