The round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Emerald Development Managers and existing investors IQ Capital and Hannover Digital Investments (HDI) GmbH.
The investment is a result of CybSafe’s continued innovation and pioneering approach to managing human cybersecurity risk. Since its Series A, CybSafe has experienced significant customer growth, adding key enterprise accounts to its impressive roster of customers, now including Credit Suisse, Barclays Bank, HSBC, FNZ Group and Moody’s. Additionally, CybSafe has also been on a mission to bolster its team. Its new Chief Marketing Officer, Munyaradzi Hoto, recently joined the team to drive growth and international expansion.
Oz Alashe MBE, former UK Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and the CEO and founder of CybSafe, said: “Cybersecurity has always been a challenge. Keeping pace today is more complex than before. And not keeping pace has more severe consequences. This has not gone unnoticed. Cybersecurity is a top priority across many management boards, with businesses spending more time and money. Recent research from CybSafe and the National Cyber Security Alliance found that 1 in 3 people have been victims of a cyber breach. Furthermore, 1 in 5 have been victims more than once. For too long, cybersecurity training has forgotten people, lacked any scientific basis, and provided no data to evidence its effectiveness. We are here to revolutionize this by helping businesses reduce risk by positively influencing behaviors in a way that can be measured.”
Some key insights from CybSafe:
Use of Funds: CybSafe will use the Series B investment to accelerate its product development and further its mission to support its customers to change behavior and lower cybersecurity risk with behavioral science and data science - ultimately preventing security incidents. It will also focus on go-to-market activities, expanding into new geographies, including the US market.
Addressable Market: Experts at Cybersecurity Ventures project the security awareness market to hit $10 billion annually by 2027 (see link below).
Returning investors: Previous investors IQ Capital and Hannover Digital Investments (HDI) GmbH are participating in the B round announced today.
Market Gap & CybSafe opportunity:
It’s generally accepted amongst the tech community that the human component is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to cybersecurity and resilience. CybSafe CEO Oz Alashe recognized several years ago that most of the security industry’s attempts to address this challenge centered on tick box training or an over-reliance on phishing simulations. “Very little of it is grounded in any clear scientific evidence, or backed up by any solid data.”
At a time where cybersecurity is the one of the top items on most board agendas, CybSafe’s innovative focus on human risk is notable. A majority of the security community still, very understandably, focuses on the technological and process aspects of cybersecurity.
CybSafe uses ‘complex behavioral frameworks and intelligent tech’ to help manage human risk. The CybSafe team is driven by the belief that “...everyone deserves to live in a better and more secure digital world”, and that security and IT professionals shouldn’t have to guess about whether what they are doing to reduce human cyber risk within their organizations is working. “We’re building software that will get increasingly effective through the delivery of behavior change micro-experiments. In doing so, we remove the guesswork from security awareness”.
CybSafe’s data-driven approach ensures more personalized, in-the-moment support for users. This is already 40-60% more effective at influencing certain security behaviors, and more helpful for users than the traditional approach to security awareness.
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