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Financing Accelerates Company's Expansion to Support Growth of Cybersecurity Testing Market
TEL-AVIV, Israel, Sept. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybersecurity Validation company, Pcysys, announced today that it has completed a $25 million Series-B Funding round led by US-based venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners, along with existing investors, Awz Ventures and The Blackstone Group. The company, which has developed PenTera, the revolutionary Automated Penetration Testing platform, has raised $40 million to date.
The funding round will be used to expand the company's sales and delivery teams in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific as well as continue the development of its best-of-breed technology.
Pcysys (an acronym for "Proactive Cyber Systems''), was founded in November 2015 by Arik Liberzon and Arik Faingold and is managed by CEO Amitai Ratzon. Since its market debut in mid-2018, the company has experienced substantial revenue growth year-over-year. Pcysys has 60 employees worldwide and hundreds of enterprise customers across more than 15 industries, including Banking, Insurance, Investment Management, Healthcare, Retail and Energy.
Automating penetration testing and red teaming activities, Pcysys' PenTera™ software platform uses algorithms to scan and ethically attack the enterprise network with the latest hacking techniques, identifying security weaknesses with a threat-facing perspective. Running on-premise or remotely, the platform enables cost-effective remediation by focusing on the vulnerabilities that take part in a proven "kill-chain", providing visibility to the true cybersecurity posture.
In addition to enterprise customers, MSSPs also use PenTera, to provide remote Penetration-Testing services (PT-as-a-Service) to their clients while leveraging the platform's remote testing capabilities, made available to support global pandemic work from home needs.
"The Pcysys team and PenTera as a product align perfectly with our mission to invest in the most advanced software ScaleUps in order to accelerate growth," said Thomas Krane, Principal at Insight Partners. "Having invested in many cybersecurity companies, we can identify the industry leader that can dominate the security validation space. PenTera is revolutionizing how enterprises manage risk validation in the enterprise, and we look forward to working alongside Amitai and the team to scale."
"We are proud and excited to have Insight Partners as a key investor together with the continued trust of The Blackstone Group and Awz Ventures," said Amitai Ratzon, Pcysys CEO. "This is a big day for our global customers, partners, and employees, to whom we owe our exponential growth and market leading product."
"PenTera has revolutionized the security risk validation domain and helped our customers increase their cyber resilience," said Arik Liberzon, Pcysys Co-Founder & CTO. "The partnership with Insight Partners will enable us to materialize our vision of becoming the cybersecurity validation authority and give every enterprise the power of a Red Team at the tips of their fingers."
"Awz is very proud of the milestones Pcysys has reached since our seed investment in 2016," said Yaron Ashkenazi, Managing Partner of Awz Ventures. "We feel privileged to have been part of the journey, assisting Pcysys in its initial penetration to the North American market, leading their Series A alongside The Blackstone Group, and now welcoming a prestigious, strategic investor - Insight Partners."
About Pcysys
Pcysys delivers PenTera, the agentless, automated penetration-testing platform, that assesses and reduces corporate cybersecurity risk. The platform is run remotely or on-premise in alignment with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to identify, analyze and focus remediation efforts on breachable vulnerabilities. Hundreds of security professionals and service providers around the world use PenTera to perform continuous machine-based penetration tests that improve their immunity against cyber-attacks across their networks.
About Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight's mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.
About Awz Ventures
Established in 2016 by Managing Partner, Mr. Yaron Ashkenazi, Awz (www.awzventures.com) is a Canadian hub for investment in cybersecurity, intelligence and physical security AI-based technologies from Israel, a global leader in these sectors. Awz manages $130M between its first two venture capital funds, having made early stage investments in 17 companies to date. Awz recently launched its $250M Series B and C Growth Fund.
Alongside Mr. Ashkenazi, Awz is led by Advisory Committee President, the Rt. Hon. Stephen J. Harper, the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, and Founder & Board Chair, Mr. Ed Sonshine. Awz management and advisors also include former directors and senior executives from Israeli and global security and intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, MI5, Mossad, ISA, CSIS, CAF), and global business and venture capital experts.
About Blackstone Group
Blackstone is one of the world's leading investment firms. We seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies we invest in, and the communities in which we work. We do this by using extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our asset management businesses, with $564 billion in assets under management, include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, public debt and equity, growth equity, opportunistic, non-investment grade credit, real assets and secondary funds, all on a global basis. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow Blackstone on Twitter @Blackstone.
Media Contact: Aviv Cohen, Pcysys CMO | aviv@pcysys.com
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