INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
When Armis launched in 2015, the company founders looked over the horizon and they saw the Internet of Things requiring a strong security
Today, the IoT security startup announced a $30 million Series B.The company has attracted a strong group of venture capitalists
The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and Red Dot Capital
Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, who were investors in earlier rounds, also participated
Today’s investment brings the total raised to $47 million.The company secures IoT devices without an agent because it’s often impossible
to put an agent on a connected device like a video camera, light bulb or sensor
That requires some knowledge of these devices and their expected behavior and Armis has created a growing database of more than 5 million
devices to track this information.Company co-founder and CEO Yevgeny Dibrov says it involves taking that database and combining it with
other information about the environment in which the device operates to understand if it’s behaving in an expected fashion
When it’s not they may shut it down and alert the customer, depending on how it’s configured and how severe the problem appears to
be.“To build and agentless platform, we [look at] existing infrastructure, traffic, wireless infrastructure and network infrastructure, to
get a huge amount of traffic information
We analyze and detect and get a fingerprint of every device and asset in the environment and leverage the 5 million devices in the knowledge
base,” he said.It’s an approach that attracted investor Jeff Williams, operating partner at Bain Capital Ventures
Williams said he has been researching the IoT security market and has been seeing explosive growth in connected devices, which he sees
creating a new attack surface for the enterprise
“Armis’ ability to help enterprises discover, manage and secure these devices is what companies today need to get in front of protecting
All these forces, plus the pedigree of Armis’ executive team and their impressive research division are setting Armis up for powerful
growth,” he said.And the company is growing quickly with dozens of customers and 50 employees
The startup’s RD team is 35 strong and is located in Israel, while the remaining employees with a focus on sales and marketing are located
in the US.As the number of IoT devices proliferate in the enterprise, the company will devote a portion of today’s money to increasing
their RD budget to continue building the database of devices.
