Cyberbit has announced that Charlesbank Technology Opportunities Fund, a fund managed by Charlesbank Capital Partners, has invested $70 million in the Company, a combination of a primary investment and a secondary purchase from Elbit Systems Ltd. Existing investor Claridge Israel also participated in the round.
Cyberbit plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its cyber range product and to grow global sales and marketing to meet the increasing demand for its product. With this funding, more cybersecurity teams will benefit from hyper-realistic training through Cyberbit Range, ensuring their organizations are fully prepared for cyberattacks and addressing the global cybersecurity skill shortage.
Cyberbit was founded in 2015 to solve a critical industry challenge: Cybersecurity teams are not prepared to respond effectively to various attacks, as they have never experienced the attacks before, and are therefore forced to learn “on the job.”
The Cyberbit Range platform addresses this challenge by introducing a new approach that immerses security teams in a virtual security operations center (SOC), where they practice responding to live cyberattacks. Trainees use commercial security tools identical to the tools used at their workplace to detect, investigate and respond to simulated attacks. The product provides comprehensive performance assessment, feedback and ranking. This breakthrough combination of real-world attacks, real-world networks, real-world security tools and accurate performance assessment allows security teams to train for and experience attacks before the fact. Organizations can quickly identify gaps in their security team’s performance, fix them and ensure their teams are fully prepared when the real attack occurs.
Cyberbit’s approach of hyper-realistic cybersecurity training is rapidly being adopted by the industry. Over the last year Cyberbit has doubled its customer base and increased Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by 100%. Cyberbit’s growing list of customers includes multiple Fortune 500 enterprises, two of the Big-Four accounting firms, training service providers, governments and academic institutions.
“We were truly impressed with the positive feedback from Cyberbit’s customers about the value they see in training with Cyberbit Range,” said Darren Battistoni, a Managing Director at Charlesbank who will join the Cyberbit Board of Directors. “The Company has shown impressive growth and has a highly capable and experienced leadership team. We are excited to partner with Cyberbit’s management and existing shareholders Elbit and Claridge Israel during the company’s next phase of growth.”
In 2019 Cyberbit launched its cloud-based cyber range offering enabling customers to participate in cyber range exercises on demand, from any location. During the COVID-19 outbreak, when most organizations were forced to cancel training for their security teams due to travel restrictions and lockdowns, Cyberbit’s cloud customers were able to seamlessly transition their security teams to remote training and maintain their skill levels. Cyberbit is seeing a spike in the demand for its cloud-based offering during COVID-19 to support remote training needs.
“We are experiencing record demand for our cyber range as organizations recognize the importance of real-world cyberattack simulation to assess and prepare their security teams,” said Adi Dar, CEO of Cyberbit. “The investment from Charlesbank will allow us to solidify our position as a best-of-breed product and allow us to accelerate our global expansion.”
“The funding will also be leveraged to accelerate sales and marketing in India, to increase our existing reach within the financial and enterprise sector, and particularly to penetrate the higher education sector in India, where we’ve seen great success globally, by helping colleges and universities launch hands-on cybersecurity programs based on cyber-range simulation,” said Rakesh Kharwal, MD-India, Cyberbit.
