Baker Donelson Accelerator Expands Portfolio and Flagship Conference

Justin Daniels has a mission: to put Atlanta's cybersecurity ecosystem on the map. Over the last two years, Daniels, a shareholder at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, assembled a cybersecurity startup accelerator out of the firm's office and organized the annual CyberCon conference. Now, the accelerator just brought about a fourth company, Gyomo, a startup using a combination of crowd-sourcing, gamification and machine learning to help train company employees to deal with phishing attacks.

Phishing attacks are a troubling pain point for IT teams. Unlike a brute force hack, which can theoretically be stopped by well-supported cybersecurity technology, phishing attacks are malicious links that come through employee inboxes, often sent from a party posing as a trustworthy or important source. Even the most suspicious users can be fooled into opening malware on their computer—LTN reporter Rhys Dipshan fell prey to a phishing training email earlier this summer.

Not only are phishing attacks tough to catch, but they're incredibly prevalent. Shutts & Bowen chief information officer Peter Abreu recently told Legaltech News that his firm is hit with phishing attacks almost daily. “We're seeing a steady increase in phishing campaigns and ransomware campaigns because the goal is to affect as many endpoints as possible,” he said.