Recorded Future CEO on cybersecurity firm's journalistic aim

SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts (AP) — The cybersecurity firm Recorded Future boasts some 1,400 clients and enjoys considerable respect. But the threat-intelligence business wasn’t enough for CEO Christopher Ahlberg. Two years ago, he created an online cybersecurity news service called The Record.

The Associated Press spoke with the 53-year-old Swede about the site's genesis and plans. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What made you decide to launch The Record?

A: Michael Bloomberg’s book “Bloomberg by Bloomberg.” I must have read it five times. We want to build a Bloomberg terminal for cybersecurity. We want all the data, all the analytics, all the research, all the news in one place. So a threat intel person, a government analyst, a security generalist can have the best intel at their fingertips.

(The Bloomberg news agency grew out of what was initially a financial data supplier delivered on proprietary terminals).

Q: What information gap did you feel needed to be filled?

A: Most outlets that write about cyber are very IT-focused. We’d like to bring it closer to where decision-makers are, where policy is made. The ransomware scourge and now the war in Ukraine have boosted demand. We publish straight to our website – without ads or a paywall. We also publish into our own service for paying customers, where the stories are cross-correlate-able with our research and raw security data.

Q: Your journalists have worked at outlets including The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. You grew with funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, and Google, and you work with the national security community. Can readers trust The Record to be editorially independent?

A: The Record is a separate unit. The editor, Adam Janofsky, has never asked...