Skybox Security signed a definitive agreement to receive a $150 million growth equity investment led by CVC Capital Partners’ Growth Fund (CVC Growth) for $100 million, with participation from Pantheon for $50 million. CVC Capital Partners is a leading private equity and investment advisory firm, and Pantheon is a prominent global investor in private equity, infrastructure and real assets.
Based in Silicon Valley, Skybox has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent and positive cash flow (2014–2016). This round of funding will enable an accelerated investment in sales and marketing, customer care and R&D. It will also be used for potential M&A activity, to capitalize on the approximately $10 billion market opportunity in cybersecurity management.
Skybox builds best–in–class cybersecurity management software that gives customers comprehensive visibility of their unique attack surface. The software uses analytics to prioritize an organization’s risk exposures and recommend informed action to best address those exposures. These capabilities extend across highly complex networks, including those in physical, virtual, cloud and operational technology (OT) environments. The company’s broad platform, the Skybox Security Suite, enables organizations to reduce security risks that attackers can find and exploit, such as device misconfigurations and policy violations, as well as exposed and un-patched vulnerabilities.
“Skybox’s track record is impressive and there is clear demand for their solution”, said Jason Glass, Senior Managing Director of CVC Growth Partners. “It is a true leader in cybersecurity management, helping organizations better protects themselves and become more efficient. Gidi Cohen, Skybox’s co-founder and CEO, is a respected innovator in security management and analytics, and we look forward to working with him and the wider executive team as we expand Skybox’s offering and global reach.”
The demand for Skybox’s solutions has been increasing due to a maturing cybersecurity market and the desire among security leaders to more efficiently manage security programs and gain better ROI from existing technologies. In the first half of 2017, for example, Skybox showed a 62 percent increase in sales and 59 percent increase in product transactions compared to the same period last year (January 1 – June 30).
“Enterprises, governments . . . everyone is either embarking on or going through massive digital transformation, and this means new challenges for security because the attack surface of these organizations is growing more complex,” said Skybox CEO Gidi Cohen. “We’ve been consistently evolving our technology to meet those challenges. With this investment, we’ll accelerate that innovation, focusing on some of the most critical areas, such as security management for the cloud and the OT networks that control critical infrastructure”.
Skybox customers are Global 5000 companies and government agencies, in more than 50 countries and nearly every industry. The company’s products are used by six of the top 10 global banks, 10 global telecommunications firms, five of the world’s largest consumer goods manufacturers and 10 of the largest energy providers globally.
