Cybereason Raises $100 Million to Hunt Attackers

Boston, MA-based Cybereason today announced that it has raised $100 million in Series D funding from SoftBank Corp. This increases the total investment in the cyber attack detection firm to $189 million since its inception in 2012. It raised $25 million in Series B financing and $59 million in Series C financing, both in 2015.

The new investment follows Cybereason’s continued growth: 500% in revenue and almost 200% in staff over the last year. Lior Div, co-founder and CEO of Cybereason, commented, “This new funding allows us to increase our growth through new distribution channels and to develop new technologies.”

Tokyo-based Softbank is not merely Cybereason’s major investor, it is also an important customer. “Our strengthened partnership with SoftBank, which has a formidable sales force and enterprise customer base in Japan and a global reach, will also enable us to further expand our presence in the cybersecurity market,” added Div. “The new capital,” he said, enables Cybereason “to expand our products, hire additional talented people and increase the size of our offices in Boston, Tel Aviv, London and Tokyo — and throughout the broader EMEA and APAC regions,” he said.

Cybereason is one of the new breed of endpoint security solutions that rely heavily on machine learning and behavioral analytics to detect threats in realtime without reliance on malware signatures. Many of its direct competitors have shown similar levels of investment in recent years. Crowdstrike raised $100 in Series C financing in July 2015, and a further $100 million in Series D in May 2017. Cylance also raised $100 million in Series D funding in June 2016, while SentinelOne raised $70 million in January 2017.

Cybereason, like Endgame (which has raised more than $90 million in funding), seeks to differentiate itself from the competition by not merely detecting anomalies, but actively hunting for the attacker. “This approach,” it says, “allows hunting to strengthen the organization’s security posture while slowing down the adversary and decreasing their dwell time. The results of a hunt can be used to build new prevention mechanisms, ensuring that the discovered security incidents do not happen again.”

“Software,” says Div, “is the most powerful force in today’s connected world. People can use its power for good or evil, and the mission of Cybereason is to stop the adversary from gaining an unfair advantage by giving our customers the upper hand.”