The industrial cybersecurity start-up CyberX is the latest acquisition of Microsoft. The deal was made in May of 2019, but now became public. Microsoft paid 165 million dollars for the startup.
CyberX was started in 2013 by former military cybersecurity experts to provide industrial cybersecurity platform defending critical infrastructure. The company’s platform aims at consistently minimizing industrial control systems risk, and averting occasional costly outages in production, environmental incidents and safety failures.
Acquiring CyberX was the right decision
To achieve this level of security, the company’s platform maps out all the connected devices in the corporate network, therefore, offering managers a boosted view of would-be risks. CyberX pinpoints systems and devices using outdated firmware. It also detects malware. It has an advanced detection algorithm, able to identify potential threats by locating system activities that deviate from the device’s usual behaviour.
Some of the key customer’s information technology security stacks that CyberX’s platform integrates with include RSA NetWitness, IBM Security, ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks and Cisco Systems.
In the acquisition statement released by Microsoft, it said that it decided to acquire CyberX to deal with challenges in securing “Internet of Things” devices, both for industrial control systems, new digitization and for legacy operations technology.
Who are the key customers and investors?
In March 2019, CyberX raised a round of $18 million. The customers are not named, but the key clients include a top-five global pharmaceutical firm, a top U.S chemical company, two of the leading U.S. energy providers and national gas and electric utilities across the Asia Pacific and Europe region.
Before its acquisition by Microsoft, CyberX had a venture capital funding of $47 million. Notable investors include Flint Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, OurCrowd, Norwest Venture Partners, Glilot Capital Partners and Inven Capital.
14 hours ago
