Pentera closes $150M Series C becoming highest valued company in its category

Automated Security Validation (ASV) company Pentera has closed a $150 million Series C funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $1 billion.

The Series C was led by K1 Investment Management alongside Evolution Equity Partners, Insight Partners, Awz Ventures and Blackstone.

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According to Amitai Ratzon, Pentera CEO, “Pentera’s exponential growth has proven that enterprises are no longer willing to compromise for assumptions and simulations, but rather demand real-world validation of their security resilience against the latest cyber attacks.”

The organisation currently serves more than 400 enterprise customers, and the funds raised will enable Pentera to scale from 150 to 300 employees by EOY 2022.

Automated Security Validation has seen more than six times revenue growth in the past 24 months due to demands driven by a surge in ransomware attacks, the company claims.
This latest round cements Pentera as the highest-valued company in its category, according to a spokesperson.

According to Christian Grant, Senior Vice President, K1 Investment Management, “Legacy vulnerability management platforms have given a false sense of security to the market.”

“Given the ever-changing threat landscape, constant and persistent testing is the only way to maintain a truly secure security posture. Pentera is the gold standard in the industry and we are thrilled to partner together for this next phase of growth.”

Pentera’s platform is said to be disrupting the legacy vulnerability management market, which is struggling to cope with the growing number of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

According to Dr. Arik Liberzon, co-founder and CTO at Pentera, “Pentera’s agentless platform helps these teams pinpoint their real security gaps. Our customers can finally trust the effectiveness of their cybersecurity stack and prove to their CEOs and boards that they’re secured against cyber attacks.”

Automated and continuous testing allows for more effective and efficient risk mitigation, says Richard Seewald, founder and managing partner at Evolution Equity Partners.

“Pentera’s continuous and automated pen-testing platform enables security teams to do more in less time to mitigate the risks that traditional penetration testing methods were not created to resolve.”

“The company has boundless opportunity to improve cyber posture worldwide and we are pleased to be partnering with Amitai and the team at Pentera.”

Pentera is set to direct the capital raised toward the growth of its international operations and product line.