IoT startup Armis raises $30 million to secure enterprise Internet of Things (IoT)

The size of the global Internet of Things (IoT) market worldwide is forecast to grow from  from $157 billion in 2016 to $457 billion by 2020. The enterprise IoT is a large portion of this market. Armis is a Palo Alto, California-based startup that eliminates the IoT security blind spot, protecting enterprises from the threat of unmanaged or rogue devices and networks. The young startup’s agentless IoT security platform is used by Fortune 1000 customers from around the world to discover and analyze any device, protecting their business critical information and systems.

To meet the growing demand for its advanced security technologies that allow enterprises to secure IoT-related digital transformation efforts, Armis announced today that it raised $30 million in Series B funding. The funding is led by Red Dot Capital Partners, a Temasek-backed Venture Capital fund based in Israel focused on growth-stage tech companies with participation from Bain Capital Ventures joining. Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, as return investors. Armis will use the new capital injection to also expand sales and marketing, and further develop its device knowledgebase and security platform. This investment brings the company’s total funding to $47 million.

“IoT is changing the connected world, creating new attack surfaces across the enterprise in every major vertical,” said Jeff Williams, Operating Partner at Bain Capital Ventures. “Rapid growth in connected devices coupled with advancements in the threat landscape demand that companies secure their new IoT reality. Armis has an impressive customer list, and is uniquely positioned to discover, manage, and secure these unseen and unprotected IoT assets.”

“Armis solves one of the most important problems in cybersecurity today – how enterprises can develop full visibility and control over the multitude of IoT devices that operate within their networks and on their physical premises, many of which are critical to run the businesses,” said Yaniv Stern, Managing Partner at Red Dot Capital Partners, who will be joining the Armis Board. “Worldwide spending on IoT security is expected to reach $3 billion in 2021. Armis’ growth potential in this market is virtually unlimited, as it’s one of the few companies providing global organizations with the ability to take full advantage of the IoT and digital transformation without having to sacrifice security. We are very impressed with Yevgeny and Nadir, as well as the team that surrounds them.”

Armis eliminates the enterprise IoT security blind spot, letting enterprises safely embrace IoT as a part of their digital transformation strategies. Its agentless security solution delivers comprehensive visibility of every device in their environment, analyzes and classifies devices and their behavior in order to identify risks or attacks, and protects critical information and systems. Armis does not require any hardware and integrates seamlessly into any environment or existing infrastructure.

Digital transformation is changing the world we live in, and the smart devices that are accompanying this shift are creating a new, complex threat landscape. Recent reports show IoT attacks are up 600% in 2017.

Armis was founded in late 2015 and is headquartered in Palo Alto with offices in Tel Aviv. The Armis team is comprised of top engineering talent from Israel and seasoned Silicon Valley technology leaders. Since launching out of stealth in June 2017, Armis has signed on leading customers including numerous customers in the Fortune 100. In September 2017, Armis announced the discovery of BlueBorne, the largest exposure of devices to date. The discovery focused U.S. organizations, congressional leaders and the news media on IoT related security issues. Today’s news follows more than a year of continued momentum and growth for Armis, with highlights that include:

Significant strides to the core platform delivering comprehensive device visibility across all networks (wired and wireless), and integration with firewalls, NAC, and other solutions including Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, and Aruba.
Expansion of their device knowledgebase to over five million individual devices characteristics such as device type, operating system, reputation, connections, interactions, and more.  “Last year, IoT played a role in driving enterprise cyber threats up by 600 percent. Organizations now recognize that connected device security is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ but is a top priority for every boardroom and C-suite,” said Yevgeny Dibrov, CEO and co-founder of Armis. “Our agentless software provides visibility and control over every device, we’ve allowed security teams to achieve goals without disrupting their businesses’ digital transformation journeys.”