Private Equity Deal Values Cofense at $400 Million
PhishMe, a security awareness firm that focuses on training employees on how to recognize and report phishing attacks, has been acquired by a private equity consortium in a deal that valued the company at $400 Million.
The company has also re-branded and changed its name to Cofense.
“PhishMe was founded to challenge the cliché – human is the weakest link,” said Rohyt Belani, CEO and Co-Founder of Cofense. “The Cofense solution set leverages internal employee-generated attack intelligence in concert with purpose-built response technologies to break the attack kill chain at delivery. Cofense reflects the full breadth of our portfolio of enterprise-wide attack detection, response, and orchestration solutions.”
The company says it currently has more than 1700 customers globally and that its PhishMe Reporter is installed on more 10 million endpoints.
In a recent survey by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) that polled more than 100 of its 7,000 global members, thirty-five percent of CISOs in the financial sector consider staff training to be the top priority for cyber defense.
“With cybersecurity a top priority for organizations everywhere, our goal is to continue bringing innovative products to markets around the globe to help stop active attacks faster than ever,” Belani added.
Cofense says it has experienced roughly 80% CAGR over the last four years, and has new offices opening in Australia, Singapore, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.
The company has previously raised a total of roughly $58 million, including a large $42.5 million funding round in July 2016. The company had raised $2.5 million in July 2012 in a Series A round, followed by $13 Million in a Series B funding round in March 2015.
Security awareness firms have been the subject of significant funding and M&A transactions in recent months.
Earlier this month, security awareness training firm Wombat Security agreed to be acquired by Proofpoint for $225 million in cash. In August 2017, Webroot acquired Securecast, an Oregon-based company that specializes in security awareness training. In October 2017, security awareness training and simulated phishing firm KnowBe4 secured $30 million in Series B financing, which brought the total amounbt raised by KnowBe4 to $44 million. Security awareness training firm PhishMe has raised nearly $58 million in funding, including a $42.5 million series C funding round in July 2016.
Related: Cybersecurity’s Venture Capital and Private Equity Money-go-Round
