Foretrace

Foretrace was a cybersecurity company that provided an external attack surface management platform to protect businesses from cyber threats. The firm's software specialized in intelligence gathering, footprinting, and scanning public infrastructure to determine an organization's exposure to external actors without credentialed access. Its platform, featuring the patent-pending Total Recon™ engine, identified data exposures from sources like data breaches and code repositories to provide early warnings before they could be exploited. The service aimed to prevent, assess, and contain the exposure of customer accounts, domains, and systems to malicious actors through continuous monitoring and customized alerts.

The company was founded in January 2021 by Nick Ascoli, who was later joined by Matt Mosley. Ascoli's interest in cybersecurity began at Penn State University, where he switched his major from business to cybersecurity. After graduating, he worked as a consultant at Security Risk Advisors for three years before launching Foretrace. Mosley brought three decades of experience in cybersecurity leadership roles to the team. The startup secured $500K in a seed funding round on February 2, 2023, led by TEDCO.

On March 26, 2024, Foretrace was acquired by Flare, a Canadian threat exposure management company. The acquisition was intended to broaden Flare's capabilities in collecting threat data by integrating Foretrace's technology, which uses generative AI to improve the correlation and contextualization of threat data. As part of the acquisition, Ascoli joined Flare as Senior Product Strategist, and Mosley became the VP of Strategic Partnerships.

Keywords: external attack surface management, threat exposure management, data exposure, cybersecurity intelligence, reconnaissance, footprinting, third-party risk management, cyber threat, data breach prevention, passive scanning