With each passing day, it feels like there’s a new story about a company whose data got breached, or about how a company’s cybersecurity infrastructure was compromised by an outside threat. There’s no escaping it: every company is at risk.

You almost wish that there was some way to get ahead of it all and detect threats before they become a big problem, or even some way to predict the future. It sounds too wild to be true, but there’s a company in Somerville that’s providing that very service to cybersecurity teams.

That company is Recorded Future. Founded in 2009, they’re a cybersecurity company that’s using the power of cyber analytics and data visualization to detect potential threats and stay ahead of them before they have the chance to become real ones.

Recorded Future was Co-Founded by CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a Swedish native who founded another analytics company in 1996 called Spotfire. When Spotfire was established, Ahlberg said, it helped lay down the foundation for the category of data visualization as we know it today. The company was ultimately acquired by TIBCO in 2007, for $195M.

After the company was sold, Ahlberg began to think about what he wanted to do next, and one day while on the treadmill, an idea struck him: What if he could take the power of an analytics engine and apply it to the Internet in order to make reliable predictions about the future? This aha moment became the genesis of Recorded Future.

But before becoming a cybersecurity company, Recorded Future focused on intelligence—specifically government intelligence. The original platform used its analytical power to predict world events, primarily by digging through thousands of web sources and presenting curated information to the end user.

They raised venture capital funding from firms like GV (formerly Google Ventures), In-Q-Tel, and others. They saw success in this area, but a few years ago, they found a new, perfect market for their technology.

“The cybersecurity industry at the time was a $50-60B market,” Ahlberg said. “Yet the success rate, despite the investments, was not stellar. Companies were still constantly getting hit.”

Four years after this transition, Recorded Future’s move into the cybersecurity industry has been a smart one, as it’s grown to what Ahlberg called a $75-80B market. The reason for this, of course, is that cybersecurity problems continue to mount, and cybercrime keeps getting worse.

“Back then, we used to be worried about hacktivists and maybe some criminals, but now, the criminals have stepped up their game dramatically, and it just seems impossible to squash them. In addition, the world’s intelligence agencies have largely gone amok. They used to stay in the background and make no noise, but nowadays they’re anything but subtle.”

The company’s platform works by using machine learning to analyze hundreds of thousands of sources—both internally as well as externally on the Internet—before presenting the relevant information to cybersecurity teams in an accessible format. Said team can use this information to identify potential predators, the tactics said predators will most likely use, and the system weaknesses they’re most likely to exploit.

Ahlberg compares Recorded Future’s offering to the Bloomberg Terminal, which financial traders use in order to analyze real-time market data. “It’s the premier analytical tool that a trader needs to be the best. Our mission is to do the same—to provide a cybersecurity toolset that allows a trader to be his best by giving him access to top-tier intelligence.”

These top-tier intelligence tools are, as Ahlberg explained, not something professionals have always had access to.

“Originally, governments were the only ones who could defend themselves, as they had access to special toolsets. But now, what we’re seeing is that companies have to defend themselves too. So we’re seeing this massive market opportunity to provide companies with intelligence tools to help them defend themselves.”

Their platform currently has almost 3,000 users, which accounts for 250 customers across 20+ countries, making Recorded Future, as Ahlberg said, the “largest independent intel threat company in the world, and probably soon, the largest intel provider to cybersecurity altogether.”

The Somerville-based company currently has over 200 employees, and they’ve raised over $50M through multiple rounds of funding. Moreover, they’ve been hiring across multiple functions over the past year, including sales, pre-sales, customer success, and marketing.

“We like to think that we found the right product-market fit. We have some real momentum in the company.”

Between ransomware, international incidents, and more, it’s clear that Recorded Future has found itself in a high-opportunity industry. And they couldn’t come at a better time, because as Ahlberg said to me during our interview, “every day you wake up and there’s something new.”

Years ago, an incredibly bright, talented colleague wandered into my office. She looked haggard; she had spent all morning trying to solve a complex legal matter she had been working through for a customer. “Do you ever feel like a fraud?” she asked. “Every day,” I responded.  

She wasn’t speaking of ethics, but rather the knowledge that no matter how wonderfully your career might be going, if you are a person with any humility, you realize far too often that you will never have all the answers. Every day, you face the knowledge that you are just doing the best you can, and that more often than not, you are making things up as you go; hoping you’re trending in a positive direction, and knowing how to course correct when you aren’t.

As I have navigated my career, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work in environments where it has been safe to take risks, and I’ve been supported to learn and grown along the way. As a result, I’ve built some great experience, and though I am far from having a perfect resume, I have never felt like I’ve needed to embellish it in any way. And yet, being in my field, I’ve seen a surprising increase in the number of people who feel the need to enhance their resumes over the last several years.

I like to operate with the general sentiment that people are generally good. And yet sometimes even good people make poor choices. If you’ve ever considered padding your background or stretching the truth a little in hopes of bolstering your ability to take on a new role, let me share these common misconceptions many assume to be true in hopes of getting you to reconsider, or aiding others, in roles like mine to catch these kinds of embellishments.

Here are a few notable tip-offs:

• Your education can’t be verified.  This is one of the easiest things to catch people on, and yet it happens all the time. Claiming to have gone to a top-tier institution when you really attended a small state school, or no school at all can be easily checked with a simple phone call. And while not every company does background checks, you should make the assumption many do. Thinking of buying a diploma from the Internet to support your claim? Save your money. We can spot them a mile away.

• Your employment dates don’t make sense. Many companies will not provide any real details about your history there if contacted, but they will confirm your employment dates. While it can seem like a simple move to tweak your employment dates just a bit, this is one of the easiest things to verify. If you have a gap on your resume you are trying to fill, highlight any consulting or volunteer work you did at that time instead.

• Your skills don’t match your claims. In an effort to impress, sometimes people will embellish their backgrounds with claims of big skills developed in past jobs. Don’t be surprised if an interviewer actually asks you questions about these areas. Claiming you are an expert in something when you don’t have the substance or experience to back it up is incredibly easy to spot check. And failing a basic test of your assertions indicates perhaps you have either stretched the truth in other places on your resume or inflated your real abilities. Either way, it’s a serious red flag.

• A Google search doesn’t reveal much. With so much of our lives readily available, assume the majority of people you interview with will do a little online research on you as part of the hiring process. It doesn’t take a lot of work to connect the dots to determine your education is fabricated, or that high-profile job you had last year was actually at a company that went out of business four years ago.

Everyone feels like a ‘fraud’ at some point during their career. But there’s a major difference between feeling overwhelmed or in over your head on a certain project and actually fudging your background and skill set on a resume. You don’t need to be a full-fledged con artist or even a bad person to consider padding your resume and background a bit. Before you do, however, realize the ramifications could be significant. Perhaps you’ve convinced yourself a little plumping of your experiences isn’t nearly as bad as flat out lying on your resume. Erroneous. In addition, while not every company does formal background checks, if they do, you’ll be caught if you’re less than truthful. If you are confirmed to be lying, whether it’s big or small, you risk damaging your reputation, missing out on that amazing job offer, or even getting fired if you are discovered.

Is it worth that risk?

Think back to 2010/2011 and there is this new currency on the Internet, "magic Internet money" if you will, that seems to be all the rage with the stereotypical Deep Web user, and they are using this type of coinage to purchase illegal goods on something called the Silk Road through the Deep Web.

This is what the world of Bitcoin looked like for a period of time. No one truly understood it, except for those same sketchy people mentioned above.

Fast forward to today, and it looks completely different...especially in the Boston tech scene.

In January, we published a four-part series detailing the ins-and-outs of the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. In honor of Boston Blockchain Week, we have compiled all four parts into one feature:

• Part 1: “Something I Learned Today” - Breaking Down and Defining the Basics - crash course on what the terms in this new frontier mean.
• Part 2: “One Step At A Time” - What Do the Investors Think? - we spoke with several investors about how they are involved with Boston’s blockchain/cryptocurrency scene.
• Part 3: “What’s Going On” - The Entrepreneurs and Companies in The Space - we profiled several startups who are utilizing this type of technology.
• Part 4:  “Newest Industry” - Future Predictions - various entrepreneurs, investors, as well as others involved with the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector on gave predictions on what they think will come next. 

I’d like to give special thanks to the following people involved with this space who also helped give me the insight needed in order to write the series: Parul Singh of Founder Collective, Neha Narula of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, Richard Dulude of Underscore VC, Dave Balter of Flipside Crypto, Rob Frasca of Cosimo Ventures, Jamie Goldstein of Pillar, Jeremy Kauffman of LBRY, Ty Danco, Chet Manikantan of Tengu, Auryn Macmillan and David DiNeno of FirstBlood, Havell Rodrigues of Adjoint, Bennett Collen of Cognate, Remy Carpinito of Esprezzo, Boris Revsin of Game Theory Crypto Group, and Christine To of AirFox.

Also, if you're a punk/alternative rock fan, you'll notice each title of the series is a Husker Du song.

I’m not a huge fan of the word badass.  

For one, a quick search will show you the term has wide-ranging meaning. Dictionary.com’s definition offers “mean-tempered troublemaker” while InternetSlang.com’s version is “cool, confident person.”  I grew up understanding the former definition; images of gangsters, WWE wrestlers, and Nancy W. (the girl who wanted to beat me up in middle school) serve as examples.  Certainly, these are behaviors a young girl would not typically see in herself.  As the meaning has morphed in today’s world to more admirable qualities regarding attitude, behavior, and work ethic, I still don’t fully identify with the term. Last week, when a colleague asked me to address a leadership class by sharing my career journey, she referred to it as my “Journey to Badass.” I wasn’t thrilled. 

She meant it as a sign of respect. Her intention was for me to share what in my career had led me to a place where I was confident sharing my point of view or taking on bold projects without fear of failure. I took a bit of time to reflect, and ultimately realized that part of my journey to get where I am today (for better or worse) has a lot to do with overcoming these stereotypes and hang-ups in the first place. 

When I was a kid, no one would have ever predicted I’d end up as an executive, let alone someone who has been playing that role since her twenties.  I grew up with a learning disability that went undiagnosed until college, leaving me coasting through school feeling entirely behind relative to my peers. I went down some questionable paths until I realized college – if I could get in – might lead me down a somewhat decent path in life.  Once there, two significant things happened: I learned about my dyslexia, and what I needed to do to work around it. I also learned I wasn’t stupid; I just had a different set of skills than other people, and I could use them to create an exciting place to thrive. Long story short, those realizations helped to transform my confidence from a girl who didn’t feel as though she had much to offer the world, to one who believed anything was possible for herself.  I was done being on the sidelines and watching others navigate success in their lives.  “Why not me?” became my mantra.   

Last week’s characterization of me as a badass made me stop and rethink the word that I had grown up with and consider people I think match the version of today’s definition.  If I believe it to mean someone who is completely authentic and unrelenting in their values, pioneering people like Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, and Tarana Burke of the #MeToo movement come to mind. Ultimately, these are people who fight for what they believe in, regardless of how hard it is, without the need for attention or need to complain along the way. And while I just offered up a handful of recognizable names, these people are often not public figures. Anyone who truly lives this way – from my friend fighting a terminal cancer diagnosis to the brave teenagers who are leading the fight to eradicate school violence – embodies what it means to be a badass in my mind.  

What does it take to get there? Here are some shared characteristics of these kinds of people that might help you awaken your inner badass: 

• Play by your own rules - I’m not referring to breaking laws and wreaking havoc in the streets.  I’m talking about not spending a whole lot of time worrying about how other people carve their paths.  In other words, in finding your way, don’t spend a lot of time fearing what other people think of you.  As long as it’s not hurting anyone, who cares what they think?
• Be candid - People respect openness and transparency, even if it sometimes comes in the form of words people aren’t willing to hear.  Balancing that directness with a healthy dose of humanity and empathy makes for a compelling combination.  
• Speak up & with purpose - Don’t wait to be called on, and don’t offer apologies for sharing your opinion.  Wait until you have something meaningful to say, and then share it with confidence. It’s usually the thing many others are thinking and don’t have the courage to say. 
• Be insatiably curious & never content - Realize you will never have all the right answers and embrace that no one is perfect.  Be willing to put yourself out there on a quest to learn and grow, and then use that knowledge to make things better. Refuse to accept the status quo and always strive for better.  
• Realize it’s not just about you - These people don’t strive to be different for the sake of being different; there is typically a strong driver and purpose behind it.  Whether it is fighting for the rights of others or giving a voice to those who don’t feel they have one, these people aren’t in it for their glory…they want to create a better world for others. 
• Ignore the naysayers - Anyone who takes a stand for something and is willing to put themselves out there is subject to some haters.  Make a conscious effort every day to ignore the negativity and focus on the positive. If you believe in what you are doing, embrace the fact that the more detractors you have, the more opportunity to have to make an impact. 

Over the past week, I’ve stopped rallying against the word badass and instead come to respect it. We have one life to live, so standing up for what’s truly important to you, finding the confidence and voice to champion it, and not spending a whole lot of time worrying what others think about you seems like good common sense. Here’s hoping we all tap into our inner badass and live the best lives – and careers – we possibly can.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.