Big Discoveries, Big Plans

Quokka entered the cybersecurity world with a big reputation — under its previous name, the company landed on the front page of The New York Times after discovering a critical security vulnerability in some Android smartphones that sent user data to Chinese servers. In 2019, the company’s further investigations into mobile apps exposed that the massive social media app TikTok was sending data to China.

The Arlington County-based firm has never sat idly in a world where the explosive growth of mobile technology has been matched by the proliferation of threats to security and privacy.

If the name Quokka sounds unfamiliar, it’s because the name itself represents the evolution of a company that germinated in 2011 as Kryptowire, a small team that vetted apps for the departments of Homeland Security and Defense. Two years later, those agencies provided funding so the company could develop services for commercial clients.

A Discovery With Global Implications

By 2016, Kryptowire became headline news after the company discovered that firmware made by many Android phones included a secret backdoor that relayed text messages, contact lists, call logs, and location information to servers in China. The revelation dominated headlines and set off a debate that continues nearly a decade later: Is the Chinese government using consumer technology to spy on Americans and other foreign users?

The publicity opened to Kryptowire the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. As the company began targeting commercial clients with its services, its leadership could see that, for private enterprise, security was just a starting point.

Companies need to reduce their mobile attack surface with security that doesn’t compromise the efficiency of their operations nor the privacy of their employees, explained Quokka CEO Dana Waldman.

“We started developing technology to strike a balance between security and privacy,” he said. “Other solutions can be rather invasive to provide their layer of security. Our R&D team has developed techniques that are extensive and comprehensive, yet do not compromise privacy.”

Quokka has developed proprietary app analysis engines that provide mobile risk intelligence. The company’s technology builds digital twins in a cloud, so it can run deep app analysis without causing drag on hardware or bandwidth.

“It’s one of our differentiators,” Waldman said. “Our technology runs entirely in the cloud. Our customers get our actionable insights in minutes, without taxing their systems and devices.”

A Boost From Remote Work 

That balance of security, efficiency, and privacy would grow more important over time as more people worked remotely, Waldman expected — but while he anticipated the shift in work culture, no one saw the oncoming tsunami that came in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This idea of remote work and remote access and working from anywhere… I call that a tailwind for us,” Waldman said. “If companies weren’t doing it before, they were certainly doing it by the end of the pandemic. Now everybody takes advantage of remote work, whether fully working from home or the office or a hybrid model…there was a fundamental cultural shift.”

When the pandemic created an opportunity for its business, Quokka made best use of it because of help it had received from VEDP’s International Trade division.

Quokka turned to VEDP in 2018 and 2019 to seek commercial clients internationally. At the time, the company was too small to have its own market research team, so VEDP played that role, finding a part of the world that would be most receptive to mobile security, Southeast Asia.

“Most companies, at the stage we were at, you’re not going to go start some big-market research department. So, when you can have this kind of a partner in VEDP, we found that to be value added,” Waldman said. “We wanted to learn more about the commercial markets so we could start to prioritize which markets might be of interest. How big are they? What are the growth rates? What are the hurdles one would have to overcome to get into these?”

Southeast Asia made sense because that marketplace is dominated by Android, whose mobile devices are more vulnerable to security breaches, the result of a supply chain with more players than Apple’s iOS and its company-controlled App Store, explained Christopher Gogoel, a Quokka vice president who oversees business units for the U.S. public sector and the Asia-Pacific region.

Critical Market Insights Drive Growth 

With guidance from VEDP, Quokka focused on three initial markets, where they found leaders who were aggressive about finding better ways to enhance security, efficiency, and privacy.

VEDP then helped Quokka find business opportunities in those countries, introducing company leaders to business networks, matching them with potential partners, and arranging events where those interactions could happen, from trade shows to tailored business missions.

Those efforts delivered big returns. Since the summer of 2023, the company has tripled its revenue from the region. “It’s a very good place for us to do business,” Waldman said.

So good, in fact, that Quokka plans to double down on the region, again with the help of VEDP, this time through the Virginia Leaders in Export Trade (VALET) program, which has helped more than 400 Virginia companies to grow business. Quokka began the two-year program in January 2025 and has targeted three additional markets.

“The VALET program, we think, will take this company to the next level,” Waldman said.

Taking on new challenges is old hat to a company that surprised some when, in 2022, it abandoned the name Kryptowire and replaced it with Quokka, the name of an obscure marsupial found along a small strip of southwestern Australia.

Quokkas are cat-sized, fuzzy creatures that look a bit like mini-kangaroos. The cute creature replaced Kryptowire’s shield emblem and helped the company stand out from rivals as the marketplace for mobile security was quickly growing.

“This was the perfect time to stake our claim as a user-friendly, low-friction, trusted partner,” Waldman said. “[Competitors’] imagery and themes are around fear. You go around a trade show in the security industry and you see lots of black and red images with shields and swords.”

The name change was also needed, he explained, to position the company away from the rise of cryptocurrency, which had the potential to cause confusion among potential customers. That same year, the company received backing to grow from venture capital, specifically from U.S. Venture Partners with participation from Crosslink Capital. That investment came because of growth facilitated by VEDP.

“VEDP really came through for us as we started getting this traction outside the United States, and it was at that point we decided to take in some venture capital to accelerate our growth plans,” Waldman said. “Adding a little bit of gas in the tank is always a good thing.”