Skycure, a leader in mobile threat defense (MTD), today announced the closing of an $8 million dollar Series A investment round led by Shasta Ventures, with participation from Skycure customer New York Life Insurance Company. The funds will be used to grow the company's sales and marketing efforts and invest further in R&D, including hiring in the US and Israel. Former investors Pitango Venture Capital and several industry-leading private investors, including Peter McKay and Michael Weider, experts in application security, also extended their investment in the round. In addition, Pitango co-founder, Rami Kalish, and former CEO of Zenprise, Jayaram Bhat, will join the board of directors.
According to Gartner the three forces that will drive the growth of security in the next few years are: mobile security, big data, and advanced targeted attacks. Skycure sits at the center of all three, leveraging massive amounts of crowd data to protect against any type of global or targeted mobile attack. The rise of cyber theft, cyber espionage, cyber fraud and cyber warfare are driving the need for mobile threat defense, as mobile devices are rapidly becoming the easiest way for hackers to attack.
Skycure is already helping a number of large organizations secure tens of thousands of mobile devices to protect their employees and business data, including New York Life.
'Having Skycure is like having a secret informant on hackers,' said Richard Moore, Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, New York Life. 'Skycure actually predicts attacks and can help you prevent them. When you have more than 35,000 mobile devices to secure like we do, that's crucial. Using Skycure gives us visibility into the threats around us and allows us to make decisions based on facts rather than hunches.'
A first in the enterprise mobile security market, Skycure's solution can be tested and deployed without requiring access to internal systems.
'As smartphones and tablets find widespread use in organizations, they have become the next frontier in the battle against cyber attacks,' said Jayaram Bhat, Venture Partner, Shasta Ventures. 'Skycure has developed a revolutionary enterprise-grade solution to defend against mobile threats as a simple, easy-to-use, downloadable mobile app which will dominate the mobile security market.'
'We are extremely grateful for the strong customer demand that has attracted high-profile investors like Shasta Ventures,' said Adi Sharabani, CEO and co-founder of Skycure. 'It was important that we build a mobile security product that is simple to deploy, easy to use, and ultra secure and it is resulting in unprecedented growth in demand for our products. We have reduced the installation time and time-to-value to literally hours, while preventing the bad guys from accessing and compromising mobile devices, applications and corporate data. It was this rapid time-to-value that convinced New York Life, one of the largest life insurers in the world, to join this round.'
New Board and Executive Team Members
Skycure adds two distinguished board members with this round: Rami Kalish, managing general partner and co-founder of Pitango, and Jayaram Bhat, former CEO of Zenprise and Venture Partner at Shasta Ventures. Both men bring extensive experience in enterprise software to advise Skycure. Kalish also serves on the boards of ForeScout Technologies, Red Bend Software, Revizer, YCD Multimedia, WeFi and RocketPlay (formerly: Gamingo). Bhat will add his deep understanding of the mobile market from his time leading the EMM leader Zenprise, acquired by Citrix.
In addition to the new board members, Skycure has also added new leadership with the appointment of executives Varun Kohli and Daniel Kandel. Kohli serves as vice president of marketing, bringing experience in marketing, product management and product development in security from companies such as ArcSight (HP), IronPort, and McAfee. Kandel heads R&D, leading the development of all Skycure products and solutions. Prior to Skycure, he led an R&D group at Imperva, managing the development of Imperva's emerging File Security product suite.
Skycure Mobile Threat Defense
Like light and flexible armor for a mobile device, Skycure's mobile threat defense solution detects and prevents cyber attacks without changing any part of the mobile experience, allowing companies to protect personal and business data while letting their employees use their devices exactly in the same way they always have.
Skycure's predictive technology is based on years of research and uses crowd wisdom to create the world's most complete picture of the Internet from a mobile perspective. Skycure conducts millions of security tests on a monthly basis and monitors tens of thousands of corporate devices. By analyzing both the malicious and legitimate behavior of the services, apps, and networks touched by each device, Skycure can predict where attacks will happen next. Skycure customers get the benefit of a 360-degree view of any incident, whether or not it affected their networks or devices. Moreover, Skycure makes information on all the malicious networks around the world publically available at https://maps.skycure.com.
With this announcement, Skycure is also introducing new features to the Skycure MTD solution. The updated version now includes:
Deep device, app and network defense capabilities including the ability to detect vulnerabilities and malicious repackaged apps that can lead to device takeover.
A Mobile Risk Score that condenses millions of data points to evaluate risks associated with each device. REST-based API allows integrating this score with other Risk Management Systems.
Integration with Exchange and leading EMM/MDM solutions such as AirWatch to allow quick and easy deployment and enforcement of existing mobile/BYOD policies.
About Shasta Ventures
Shasta Ventures is a boutique, early-stage venture firm investing its fourth fund in consumer technology and enterprise start-ups. Shasta aims to partner with bold, creative entrepreneurs who have exceptional instincts and insights into the needs, desires and behaviors of the people who use their products. The firm is based in Menlo Park and San Francisco, California. Shasta Ventures has supported the founders of dozens of successful companies, including: Anaplan, Apptio, Crittercism, Lithium, Mint, Nest, Nextdoor, Turn, Zenprise and Zuora. For more information, please visit www.shastaventures.com, or follow us on Twitter at @shasta.
About Skycure
Skycure is a mobile threat defense company that detects and prevents cyber attacks without compromising the mobile user experience. Skycure's predictive technology leverages massive crowd knowledge to proactively identify threats and secure mobile devices. Skycure's founders, Adi Sharabani and Yair Amit, have identified some of the most-discussed mobile device vulnerabilities of the past few years. The company has offices in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv and is backed by Pitango Venture Capital, Shasta Ventures, New York Life, Mike Weider, Peter McKay, and other strategic investors.