BOSTON, Jan. 17, 2025 – r4, a defense technology startup, has emerged from stealth mode with a platform designed to simplify the often-complex world of software licensing, particularly for non-production environments. The company, which has secured $1 million in seed funding, is launching a private beta of its application and API. This technology aims to assist organizations using virtualized network infrastructure, IT tools, and security solutions in settings like cyber ranges, academic courses, and development environments.
The r4 platform offers a centralized hub for effectively managing software licenses, tracking associated costs, and organizing assets. The company is led by co-founders Sean Donnelly and Luke Zirngibl, who bring over a decade of experience in 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,” said Sean Donnelly, r4’s co-founder and CEO. “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.”
With over 25 partnerships already established with software manufacturers and distributors, r4 is rapidly expanding. Seven months ago, the company began reaching out to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), emphasizing the value that leading organizations derive from cyber ranges. As a result, favorable pricing and billing options have been secured for non-production use of numerous software products. Co-founder and CPO Luke Zirngibl highlighted, “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. Just enabling companies to import, organize, and track the software licenses they already have has proven to be valuable.”
Cyber range platform companies themselves are also showing significant interest in r4’s offerings. These companies provide the infrastructure, orchestration, and management tools needed to design, deploy, and maintain interactive environments. They’ve turned to r4 as a dependable and automated option for software licensing. Initially, many organizations relied on open-source software for training security professionals. However, as skills have evolved, so has the demand for more realistic training environments. The industry now requires parity between cyber range environments and production environments in areas like operating systems, user activity, and network traffic flow. This realism extends to building capabilities or rehearsing actions for production networks.
r4 has been primarily focused on creating more realistic networks in cyber range platforms but recognizes that networks aren’t the only, or even the most common, attack surface today. With that in mind, a prototype is being developed that assists customers to deploy and connect Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tenants that simulate enterprise SaaS environments. This will enable security teams to practice identity attack and defense techniques, test-drive SaaS products, and integrate cloud attack surfaces into cyber exercises. Jeff Fisher, an advisor to the company, noted, “When you see a company pushing the envelope to more effectively train highly skilled cyber operators, you can’t help but be excited.”
