Sending a patch to a satellite is not an option, and that gap is where TigerByte Cyber sees a market. The defense contractor has closed a $3M seed round to scale the hardware-based security it builds for satellites, aircraft, vehicles and drones.
Government work is already on the books. TigerByte disclosed more than $7M in contracts, with the US Space Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency among the agencies it serves. The fresh capital goes toward production and a larger US manufacturing footprint.
Four mechanisms carry the Cyber Protection Suite, the company’s flagship product, and they aim at hardware rather than software: data validation enforced by policy, deep packet inspection, segmentation of the network, and post-quantum encryption. The product targets legacy communications and navigation equipment that has to interoperate with newer systems, an arrangement that leaves old links exposed.
The edge is where the risk sits
CEO Sage Secilmis said the company exists to carry modern cloud security practice onto edge systems that run with little protection and no tolerance for failure.
Auditors reached a parallel conclusion in July 2026, when the Government Accountability Office published a report describing commercial aviation as a growing target as aircraft and the ground systems they talk to intertwine. Its catalog of weak points runs through software that is years out of date, remote services, internet-reachable systems, supply-chain dependencies and network segmentation that is too weak.
Orbit adds a harder constraint, since no technician can reach a compromised spacecraft and patching windows are rare. Suppliers that secure the link between satellite buses and their ground networks are drawing defense money on that basis.
