A consortium of private equity firms has announced the acquisition of PhishMe, which has been rebranded as Cofense.
With the backing of multiple private equity firms, including BlackRock and Pamplona Capital Management, to support future innovation via organic and inorganic growth initiatives, Cofense will continue to deliver solutions in phishing defense by offering solutions that sit at the intersection of human intelligence and technology. The deal is valued at around $400m.
Rohyt Belani, CEO and co-founder of Cofense, said that PhishMe was founded to challenge the cliché that people are the weakest link in security, but its customers affirm that not only can their employees be conditioned to be less susceptible to cyber-attacks but, in fact, they can be turned into sensors of such attacks that provide very timely intelligence.
“The Cofense solution set leverages internal employee-generated attack intelligence in concert with purpose-built response technologies to break the attack kill chain at delivery,” he said.
“Cofense reflects the full breadth of our portfolio of enterprise-wide attack detection, response and orchestration solutions.
“This acquisition further strengthens the alignment between our management team, employees and investors as we focus on building an enduring company. With cybersecurity a top priority for organizations everywhere, our goal is to continue bringing innovative products to markets around the globe to help stop active attacks faster than ever.”
Scott Crawford, research director for information security at 451 Research, said: “PhishMe is the second deal in less than a month involving anti-phishing, reflecting the high interest of enterprises in solutions for combating the impact of targeted users on information security.
“According to recent 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise studies, user behavior is by far the number one pain point reported by enterprise security professionals, with the challenges of security awareness training in the top five, while security awareness initiatives were the number one infosec project reported by enterprises in 2017.
“PhishMe has distinguished itself in this space by broadening beyond anti-phishing to connect phishing intelligence with security operations and incident response, reflecting the continued significance of phishing and related tactics as primary vehicles for attack penetration.”