Pcysys Announces $10 Million Funding Round Completion
Financing Accelerates Automated Penetration Testing Platform Market Expansion
TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyber Security Risk Validation startup, Pcysys, announced today that it has completed a $10 million series-A funding round led by Canadian VC, Awz Ventures, along with Blackstone. The company, which has developed a platform for Automated Penetration Testing, has raised $15 million to date.
Pcysys (an acronym for "Proactive Cyber Systems"), was founded in November 2015 by Arik Liberzon and Arik Faingold and has been managed by CEO Amitai Ratzon since 2018. The company has 50 employees and is approaching 100 paying enterprise customers, across 15 verticals, including Banking, Insurance, Asset Managers, Retail, Energy, and Healthcare, in North America, Europe and Israel.
Automating red teaming and penetration testing activities, Pcysys' PenTera™ platform uses algorithms to scan and ethically penetrate the corporate network with the latest hacking techniques, prioritizing remediation efforts with a threat-facing perspective. The platform enables organizations to focus their remediation efforts on the vulnerabilities that take part in a damaging "kill-chain" without the need to chase down thousands of vulnerabilities that cannot be truly exploited towards data theft, encryption or service disruption.
"Our Blackstone Innovations technology team is a strong believer in automating risk validation and believes that the PenTera platform will evolve to become a market leader in the years to come," said Blackstone CISO, Adam Fletcher. "We've seen firsthand the benefits of the Pcysys Platform in our day-to-day vigilance in keeping our cybersecurity defenses challenged and tuned."
"We are honored to have Awz and Blackstone supporting us in this round of funding, sharing our vision of continuous risk validation," said Amitai Ratzon, Pcysys CEO. "Our customers have been investing millions in defense technologies, without the ability to effectively validate against the real threat. PenTera has finally made this possible, paving the way to revolutionizing risk validation, as we know it today. Pcysys intends to use the additional funding to expand its sales and support functions in North America and EMEA and to further develop its enterprise-grade technology".
"Since our first investment in 2017, Awz has believed in the Pcysys management team and the company's compelling value proposition", said Awz Ventures Founder and Managing Partner, Yaron Ashkenazi. "We are proud of Pcysys and the incredible progress that they made in such a short period of time. We were delighted to also lead this series-A fundraising round and we believe the company will continue to build on its success. Together with our new partner, Blackstone Innovation, we are confident Pcysys can become a global leader in the field of cyber security and risk validation.
About Blackstone
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 $554 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.
About Awz Ventures
Established in 2016 by Managing Partner, Mr. Yaron Ashkenazi, Awz (www.awzventures.com) is a Canadian hub for investment in cyber security, intelligence and physical security AI-based technologies from Israel, a global leader in these sectors. Awz manages $100M between its first two venture capital funds, Awz HLS Fund I and II, having made early stage investments in 14 companies to date. 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 senior executives from Israeli and Canadian agencies (Mossad, ISA, CSIS, CAF), and global business experts.
About Pcysys
Pcysys (www.pcysys.com) delivers PenTera™, an automated penetration-testing platform, that assesses and reduces corporate cybersecurity risk. By applying the hacker's perspective, our software identifies, analyzes and prioritizes remediation of cyber defense 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 organization networks.
Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/832279/Pcysys_Logo.jpg
Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1028478/Pcysys_Blackstone.jpg
Media contact:
Aviv Cohen, Pcysys CMO
aviv@pcysys.com
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