Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Category: computer security

Cybersecurity VC funding surges to a record $11.5B in 2021

by Carly Page

The pandemic completely upended the threat landscape as we know it. Ransomware accounted for an estimated 2.9 million attacks so far in 2021, and supply-chain attacks that targeted Kaseya and SolarWinds have increased fourfold over 2020, according to the European Union’s cybersecurity agency, ENISA, which recently warned that the more traditional cybersecurity protections are no longer effective in defending against these types of attacks.

This has created an unprecedented need for emerging technologies, attracting both organizations and investors to look closer at newer cybersecurity technologies.

“We are seeing a perfect storm of factors coming together to create the most aggressive threat landscape in history for commercial and government organizations around the world,” said Dave DeWalt, founder and managing director of NightDragon, which recently invested in multi-cloud security startup vArmour. “As an investor and advisor, I feel we have a responsibility to help these organizations better prepare themselves to mitigate this growing risk.”

According to Momentum Cyber’s latest cybersecurity market review out Wednesday, investors poured $11.5 billion in total venture capital financing into cybersecurity startups in the first half of 2021, up from $4.7 billion during the same period a year earlier.

More than 36 of the 430 total transactions surpassed the $100 million mark, according to Momentum, which includes the $543 million Series A raised by passwordless authentication company Transmit Security and the $525 million round closed by cloud-based security company Lacework.

“As an investor in the cyber market for over fifteen years, I can say that this (Read more...)

Ex-Plaid employees raise $30M for Stytch, an API-first passwordless authentication platform

by Mary Ann Azevedo

There are far fewer annoying things than managing one’s passwords.

There are a bunch of companies out there to help you attempt to do that. And there’s also a number of companies that want to go a step further and eliminate the password completely.

One such company, Stytch, just raised $30 million in a Series A round of funding as it launches out of beta with its API-first passwordless authentication platform.

The round caught our attention for a couple of reasons.

For one, this is the same startup that just months earlier announced it had raised a $6.25 million seed round led by Benchmark with participation from Index Ventures and a number of angels including Plaid co-founder William Hockey. That round was speculated to have valued the new company at a staggering $200 million (although that was never confirmed), and was actually raised last summer around the time of Stytch’s founding, but only announced this year. Other angels that have backed the company include Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field, Very Good Security co-founder Mahmoud Abdelkader, startup advisor Elad Gil and early Stripe employee and Cocoon co-founder Amber Feng.

Also notable about this round is that Stytch was founded by two former Plaid employees, Reed McGinley-Stempel (CEO) and Julianna Lamb (CTO), who built user authentication features that “millions” use to connect their bank accounts to apps like Venmo, Coinbase and Robinhood. The company was founded on the premise that passwords are no longer secure, and make companies easy targets (Read more...)

Security startup Tessian, which uses AI to fight social engineering, trousers $65M

by Natasha Lomas

In the latest chunky funding round out of Europe, UK-based email security startup, Tessian, has closed $65 million in Series C funding. The startup applies machine learning to build individual behavior models for enterprise email use that aims to combat human error by flagging problematic patterns which could signify risky stuff is happening — such as phishing or data exfiltration.

The Series C round was led by March Capital. Existing investors Accel, Balderton Capital, Latitude and Sequoia Capital also participated, along with new investor Schroder Adveq.

The latest financing brings Tessian’s total raised to-date to $120M+, and values the company at $500M, it said today.

The 2013 founded startup last raised back in January 2019 when it closed a $40M Series B (news that was scooped by former TCer, Steve O’Hear). Prior to that it grabbed a $13M Series A in mid 2018.

Tessian has around 350 global customers at this stage, across the legal, financial services, healthcare and technology sectors — name-checking the likes of Affirm, Arm, Investec and RealPagem among them.

Over the past year there has been much coverage of the security risks associated with the pandemic-sparked remote working boom, as scores of white collars workers started logging on from home — expanding the attack surface area which enterprises needed to manage.

It’s a risk that’s been good for Tessian’s business: The startup says it tripled its Fortune 500-level customer base last year — “as enterprises required a solution that could protect them against (Read more...)