LIGHTCYBER RAISES $20M TO MEET GROWING GLOBAL DEMAND FOR BEHAVIOURAL ATTACK DETECTION SOLUTIONS

LightCyber, a leading provider of Behavioural Attack Detection solutions, has announcedthe completion of a$20 million financing round. The round was led bythe U.S.-based group,Access Industries, through its Israeli technology investments entity, Claltech, and network security luminary Shlomo Kramer, who joined the LightCyber Board of Directors last year,and whoseprior investment has converted into this financing round. Existing investors Battery Ventures, Giliot Capital Partners and Amplify Partners also fully participated in the fundraising.

Kramer is the founder and chief executive officer of Cato Networks and best known as the co-founder of Check Point Software, founder and chief executive officer of Imperva, early investor and former board member of Palo Alto Networks (from 2006 to 2012) and an early investor in Trusteer (acquired by IBM). Access Industries is a U.S.-based groupwith significant investments in a wide variety of successful technology companies, including Square, Spotify, Beats Music (sold to Apple), Perform, Zalandoand Warner Music Group, to name a few. Access invests in Israeli tech companies primarily through its local entity ClalTech, with Israeli-based investments including Zerto, ironSource, Yotpo and Zooz.

“LightCyber has clearly proven that the Magna Behavioural Attack Detection platform canprovide organisations with an unprecedented level of security visibility that can pinpoint active network attackers quickly and accurately and curtail a potential data breach,” said Shlomo Kramer. “The market need and opportunity for the Magna platform is extraordinarily high, so it is important to facilitate rapid global expansion.”

The new funding will be used for fuelling further growth in sales and marketing worldwide. LightCyber has been expanding rapidly since its last round of funding in September 2014. Last month the company announced the opening of its EMEA regional headquarters and operations in the U.K. and DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). It also started its APAC operations earlier this year. LightCyber has grown its sales team by 150 percent over the past three months and plans to grow it by a total of 400 percent by year end. Directing this growth is Claudio Perugini, who earlier this year was appointed senior vice president of worldwide sales. In early 2015, LightCyber established its U.S. headquarters in Silicon Valley, and has been rapidly expanding domestically.

“With major data breaches making headlines nearly every day, traditional security often fails to adequately protect organisations from being breached, and LightCyber brings a unique solution to solve this issue,” said Daniel Shinar, Claltech’s chief executive officer, who leads Access Industries tech investments in Israel. “We are pleased to join the team led by CEO Gonen Fink and the co-founders Giora Engel and MichaelMumcuoglu, as well as the strong investors supporting the company.” Following the funding round, Shinar will join the LightCyber Board of Directors.

Lloyd’s estimated that cyberattacks currently cost businesses $400B per year¹, and Juniper Research estimated that the average cost of each data breach will soar to $150 million by 2020². Today, less than 1 percent of enterprises have the capability to find an active attacker at work on their network before theft or damage occurs.

LightCyber provides companies with security visibility into active attacks from cybercriminals and insiders that would otherwise be invisible to traditional security. Organisations must expect that motivated attackers can always circumvent conventional threat prevention infrastructure and penetrate their networks. The LightCyber Magna platform detects these active attackers by their operational activities and curtails a data breach or other consequences.

“We are proud to have the full confidence of our new investors,as well as the continued support from our existing investors, as we set out in our next phase of growth,” said Gonen Fink, chief executive officer, LightCyber. “The proven value of our Magna platform validates that enterprises need a fundamentally different approach to detect active attackers based on the live behavioural profiling of user accounts, network traffic, and endpoint systems. The strong progress we made during 2015 reflects the efficacy of our solution and the growing market realisation that preventative security alone is no longer sufficient.”

¹as reported herehttp://www.cyberinsurance.co.uk/cybernews/lloyds-ceo-cyber-crime-cost-businesses-up-to-400-billion-a-year/

²according to a press release dated May 12, 2015 http://www.juniperresearch.com/press/press-releases/cybercrime-cost-businesses-over-2trillion

LightCyber and Magna are trademarks of LightCyber in the United States and other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.