Sitting in a Tel Aviv office, my interviewee borrowed my iPhone for a simple demo. Inside two minutes, he was displaying my key strokes and web browsing onto a big screen in the meeting room, entirely remotely. I’d heard Israel was a hotbed of security startups — but this was a pretty impressive demo.
Now that startup, Skycure, has secured a $16.5 million funding round for its enterprise-level protection from mobile cyber threats.
The Series B round was led by Foundation Capital, with the cash being used to expand the company’s presence in EMEA and APAC, broaden customers and invest in its mobile threat-defense platform.
This round brings Skycure’s total funding to $27.5 million. All of the company’s previous investors participated in this round, including Shasta Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, Skycure customer New York Life and private investors Peter McKay and Michael Weider. Skycure also added Lane Bess, industry veteran and former CEO of Palo Alto Networks, as a private investor.
Adi Sharabani, CEO and co-founder of Skycure says: “We’re in the midst of a massive security revolution driven by tiny devices. Mobile is the biggest challenge to enterprise security today and it requires vastly different considerations than desktop, network, or even cloud security.” Clearly this won’t stop at mobile, and Skycure will almost certainly have an eye on IoT, as well. It’s partners include AirWatch and MobileIron, while its competitors include companies like CheckPoint and FireEye.
Paul Holland, general partner at Foundation Capital says: “Enterprise mobile security is a burgeoning, multi-billion-dollar market.” And indeed, Holland previously invested in MobileIron — so he should know.
Skycure helps enterprises secure employee mobile devices when they adopt BYOD. Its most recent mobile threat intelligence report found that nearly every organization with more than 200 devices has at least one device infected with malware and about 23 percent of the mobile devices will be exposed to a network threat in the first month of security monitoring. This number increases to 45 percent over the following three months.
In a nutshell, Skycure’s predictive technology uses a layered approach that leverages “massive crowd-sourced threat intelligence, in addition to both device- and server-based analysis.” I’m sure you all get that.
Founded in 2012 by Adi Sharabani and Yair Amit, Skycure has more than 50 employees worldwide, with a 60-40 split between Israel and the U.S.