Right before COVID entered our lives, disrupting world order, cyber firm Armis was acquired by Insight at a $1.1 billion valuation - Israeli high-tech’s largest cyber acquisition to date. This brings us to this week, when Armis announced another funding round, this time hitting a $2 billion valuation, nearly doubling its previous value. The exact details have yet to be released, but according to reports the investment lies somewhere in the $125 million range, with no secondary components.
The investment was led by asset management firm Brookfield, who is an Armis customer - with participation from company stakeholders Insight Partners, and CapitalG, Alphabet’s Scale-Up venture.
Securing unmanaged IoT
Armis identifies unmanaged and unconnected IoT devices, analyzes the devices for threats and attacks, and secures critical systems and data by flagging suspicious or malicious devices, and quarantining them (fitting our pandemic reality). The company’s technology works behind the scenes, analyzing and monitoring an organization’s network to determine traffic source; Next, the system detects for anomalies in performance, and if found immediately disconnects the device from the organizational network - no matter its protocol: WiFi, land line, or even Bluetooth.
This becomes a crucial security component, especially in the world of IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) where threats to an MRI machine could end up costing lives. The IoMT industry is a big focus for the company, becoming even more relevant during the ongoing global pandemic, and increase of medical device use. Another sector where the Armis system roams is in the world of IIoT, which is expected to see 75% of major manufacturers make the jump to smart production, adding more connected devices to their factories.
Armis was founded in 2015 by Yevgeny Dibrov and Tomer Schwartz (no longer with the company), formerly of Adallom; and Nadir Izrael, previously at Google. To date Armis raised around $300 million. Unlike other acquisitions involving Israeli startups, Insight Partner’s Armis deal was intended for future yields, leaving the Israeli IoT cyber firm to operate totally independent.
Growth, growth. growth
Armis explain that the dedication to healthcare systems and continued rapid expansion into OT and IT helped drive 750% in revenue growth over the past 2 years, while the company’s customers have grown over 450% over the same time. Armis kicked off 2020 with 250 employees, 130 of them based in the Tel Aviv R&D center, and 2021 launches with the Armis team growing by 100 more employees.
“Brookfield’s footprint spans far and wide, including physical infrastructure and healthcare assets, which are sectors that are increasingly turning to Armis to help them protect the explosion of blind spots from connected device adoption. Bad actors are exploiting the lack of security on these devices – managed, unmanaged, IoT, IoMT, and OT – and attacks on these businesses are growing at exponential rates with severe real-life consequences. In addition, as COVID-19 vaccinations rollout this year, our partnership with Brookfield and its massive real estate footprint of over 500 million square feet in commercial office space provides an opportunity to work with companies to ensure data and information security as they bring employees back to the office with more devices than ever before,” said CEO and co-founder Yevgeny Dibrov.
