The powerful and smart security operations team is at the heart of their cybersecurity strategy, and today startups building tools to keep their toes unveil their funds against a backdrop of growth. Pentera has built a system to launch testing software and simulations of network attacks to stress-test human responses – has announced $60 million in funding.
The funds will be used for M&As and to continue developing the product, CEO Amitai Ratzon said in an interview.
Pentera is a play by the term “pentest,” short for penetration testing, a program designed to help train security teams on potential attack technologies. This is a product officially described as “automated security verification,” and was brought to great extent by Pentera.
“We provide businesses and governments with the technology that allows them to launch a huge attack on themselves when they click the button, and another click will bring the genie back into the bottle,” says Ratzon. “The beautiful thing is that it’s all safe by design.”
And, in contrast to fire drills in the office, for example, Pentera’s simulated attacks are carried out in ways that the rest of the organizations other than the security team are not wise.
The round has grown Pentera customers by 200% to 1,100 organizations, 300% over the past four years, highlighting the market demand for its tool.
Evolution Equity Partners leads the round, with Fallalon Capital taking part. Prior to this, the company was originally called Pcysys. According to Pitchbook, it was rebranded in 2021. It raised $190 million from the combination of primary and secondary equity. Other investors include Insight, K1 and Blackstone.
The rise of Pentera is coming into the wave of automation in the world of cybersecurity.
The world of cybersecurity is effectively ambushed by the arrival of AI, which both malicious hackers use to compromise systems, and the wide range of tools that help identify and stop truck attacks.
Pentera considers this swing as part of its AI platform. When an attack is launched, the process identifies the specific vulnerability and the various regions within an organization’s network.
Typically, this could throw as many as 10,000 alerts, Ratzon said.
To be fair, the overwhelming number of live products alerts is a classic issue with many security tools, and many startups are also tackling that issue. In the case of Pentera, it automatically takes 10,000, whittles it into six or eight root causes or exploitable vulnerabilities, provides suggestions on how to fix them, and leaves it up to the team.
“Pentera has redefines the testing and verification practices of enterprise security,” said Richard Seewald, managing partner at Evolution Equity Partners in a statement. “Pentera’s extraordinary growth, strong corporate recruitment and category-defining innovations will make us a clear leader in automated security verification. We are proud to lead this investment, expand our relationship with Pentera globally, expand its technology and continue to set industry standards for security verification.”
Pentera is far from the only company that provides penetration testing tools to businesses. Others who create automated simulations, a more direct competitor, include Cymulate, which was valued at around $500 million in the 2022 funding round.