Defense Tech Startup r4 exits Stealth to Streamline Software Licensing for Non-Production Environments
BOSTON, Jan. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- r4, a defense tech startup with $1 million in seed funding, emerged from stealth today with a solution that simplifies the procurement and management of non-production software licenses. Now available in private beta, the r4 application and API allow customers using virtualized network infrastructure, IT tools, and security solutions in cyber ranges, academic courses, and development environments to effectively license and manage software, track costs, and organize assets all in one place.
The company is led by co-founders Sean Donnelly and Luke Zirngibl, who've both spent the last decade mostly focused on cyber range-related work. "We have substantial founder-market fit. We're solving a set of problems that we know well and that have existed in this space for a long time with very little progress made. There are many large government and commercial organizations that want the ability to quickly build realistic test and training environments and licensing is a key piece of that," said r4 co-founder & CEO Sean Donnelly.
With more than 25 software manufacturer and distributor partnerships in place, the two are moving quickly. Seven months ago, the pair kicked off an effort to get OEMs onboard. Their pitch focused on evangelizing cyber ranges by highlighting the value some of the largest organizations in the world are getting from them. r4 has since negotiated favorable pricing and billing options for non-production use of dozens of software products. "Large enterprises do a lot of important work outside of their production networks. And even when they have a certain technology deployed in production, getting it licensed and set up in a cyber range is generally not easy," said co-founder and CPO Luke Zirngibl. "Just enabling companies to import, organize, and track the software licenses they already have has proven to be valuable."
Large enterprises aren't the only ones showing interest in r4. Cyber range platform companies themselves – which deliver the infrastructure, orchestration, and management tools needed to design, deploy, and maintain interactive environments – are turning to r4 as a reliable, automated option for software licensing. Early on, organizations were comfortable relying on open-source software for training security practitioners. But as the collective skill level has risen, so has the desire for more realistic environments. The industry has reached a point where having operating system, user activity, and network traffic flow parity with production environments is table stakes. And the importance of network and identity realism gets even higher when customers are looking to build capabilities or rehearse actions they plan to execute in production environments.
While r4 has mainly focused on helping customers build more realistic networks in cyber range platforms, they're keenly aware that networks aren't the only, or even the most popular, attack surface these days. With that in mind, they've prototyped a way for customers to deploy and connect SaaS tenants that mimic enterprise SaaS estates, enabling security teams to practice identity attack and defense techniques, test drive SaaS products, and add cloud attack surfaces to cyber exercises. "When you see a company pushing the envelope to more effectively train highly skilled cyber operators, you can't help but be excited," said Jeff Fisher, an advisor to the company.
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About r4
r4 is simplifying the procurement and management of non-production software licenses for U.S. government organizations, security training providers, and commercial security teams. Deploy, license, connect, and configure virtual appliances, containers, and SaaS accounts in non-production environments. For more information, please visit r4.dev.
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