The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) has announced that three Maryland companies received funding from its Cybersecurity Investment Fund (CIF). Strajillion, Protenus and Ridgeback are the first three companies, each receiving $100,000 through CIF. The fund supports Maryland companies that develop and commercialize new cybersecurity products or services by providing investments of up to $100,000.

“CIF is the first dedicated cybersecurity fund created in the state to help establish Maryland as the innovation hub of information security,” said Rob Rosenbaum, president and executive director of TEDCO. “We are extremely pleased to have funded these companies and believe they have created very unique products, and with the financial support from CIF, are confident they can accelerate their development and commercial launch.”

Ridgeback Network Defense, located in bwtech@UMBC incubator, offers a low-maintenance cybersecurity device that attaches to an organization’s networks. Ridgeback actively defends an organization’s assets by analyzing network activity in real time, modeling the flow of information and evaluating the appropriateness of all activity occurring on the network.

Strajillion, located in the Johns Hopkins Fast Forward incubator, empowers and supports parents raising kids in the mobile and social world with its modern parenting tool, RAKKOON. The cloud-based management tool enables parents to see where their children are, what apps they are using, who they are communicating with and what they are saying.

Protenus Inc., co-located with Sage Growth Partners in Baltimore, helps hospitals protect patient data in the electronic medical record using analytical tools that detect privacy breaches in real-time. The company’s solution takes a new approach to HIPAA compliance that empowers hospitals with the ability to detect, thwart and remediate patient privacy breaches as they occur in electronic health records.