There is money to be made in lots of different areas of the cyber security market, including training and awareness. That’s the reason security firm KnowBe4 announced on Oct. 24 that it has raised a new $30 million series B round of funding.
The new funding round was led new investor Goldman Sachs Growth Equity (GS Growth) with existing investor Elephant participating. Total funding to date for KnowBe4 now stand at $44 million since the company was founded back in 2010.
“The demand for KnowBe4’s platform has driven 18 straight quarters of growth,” Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 Founder and CEO, stated. “The funding comes at an important time for us as we are expanding globally.”
KnowBe4’s Series B funding round comes a day after the company announced the acquisition of securable.io, which provides data driven cyber security education resources.The securable.io acquisition adds new content analytics capabilities to the KnowBe4 platform.
“This enables KnowBe4 to get a closer look at how users are interacting with content and find the most relevant and engaging training for that person,” Sjouwerman stated.
KnowBe4 is also expanding globally, announcing on Oct. 10 a new set of European growth plans with a new office in the U.K.
Among KnowBe4’s products and services is the Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training program.
“Based on Kevin’s 30+ year unique first-hand hacking experience, you now have a platform to better manage the urgent IT security problems of social engineering, spear-phishing and ransomware attacks,” KnowBe4’s websites states.
KnowBe4 is not alone in the security awareness and training market and competes against multiple vendors, including PhishMe, which has raised a total of $58 million in funding since 2011.
Sjouwerman is confident in both his company and its ability to succeed.
“The confidence in our company demonstrated by GS Growth’s investment shows the strength of the new-school security awareness training market, and support for KnowBe4’s approach and dedication to mobilizing an organization’s last line of defense, its employees, to make smarter security decisions and reduce overall company risk,” he stated.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eSecurityPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
