Semperis, an identity-driven cyber resilience firm, announced it has raised $200m in Series C funding led by KKR, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, Atrium Health Strategic Fund, Tech Pioneers Fund, and existing investors like Insight Partners.
Semperis is the fastest-growing cybersecurity firm in America per the Financial Times 2022 ranking. The funding will help enable Semperis to boost hiring across all functions to support its expanding client base, with emphasis on its identity-focused incident response team.
What is Semperis’ market offering?
Identity systems like Microsoft Active Directory (AD) and Azure AD, used in over 90% of firms, are coming under sustained attack. With its multi-layered defense approach before, during, and after an attack, Semperis offers the industry’s most comprehensive security tech for hybrid AD and other identity systems, combined with incident response expertise.
“From day one, Semperis has been on a mission to be a force for good,” said Semperis CEO Mickey Bresman, who co-founded Semperis along with Guy Teverovsky and Matan Liberman.
“With Semperis’ multi-layered identity protection, firms can fend off cyber attacks without being forced to choose between two bad options: paying the criminals or getting shut down.”
“With the combined experience that KKR, Ten Eleven Ventures, Insight Partners, and other esteemed investors in this round bring scaling high-growth cybersecurity companies, we have an elite group of strategic partners in our corner to help advance our mission,” said Mickey.
What are the investors’ thoughts on Semperis?
“Semperis is driving innovation in an overlooked but critical area of cybersecurity: identity system defense,” said Ten Eleven Ventures Founder and General Partner, Mark Hatfield.
“This funding is among the largest cybersecurity raises so far in 2022, will enable Semperis to continue to grow its commanding position in this increasingly important market segment.”
KKR is investing in Semperis through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, a fund dedicated to growth equity investment opportunities in the technology space. Ben Pederson, Director on KKR’s Tech Growth team, has joined Semperis’ Board of Directors.
“A dedicated client base, including a growing number of the largest firms in the world, trust Semperis to defend their critical identity systems from cyberattacks,” said Ben Pederson.
“The vast majority of attacks today are identity-based, targeting credentials to infiltrate businesses. Semperis’ leading identity protection technology and incident response expertise are delivering category-defining innovation, and KKR is proud to back their mission.”
“We are thrilled to participate in another funding round with Semperis and continue to offer support for our mutually successful strategic partnership. We believe in Semperis’ unique cybersecurity approach of securing the foundational identity infrastructure, which combines industry-leading technology and incident response support to offer customers a complete identity system defense,” said Insight Partners Managing Director, Teddie Wardi.
Why is Semperis a unique industry player?
Semperis is dedicating a significant portion of the funding to R&D to drive further innovation in the identity system defense market, focusing on its Directory Services Protector platform, which Gartner categorizes as an identity threat detection and response (ITDR) solution.
Gartner included ITDR in its top cybersecurity trends for 2022, noting that credential misuse is a primary method attackers use to access systems and achieve their goals.
Frost & Sullivan awarded Semperis the 2022 Competitive Strategy Leadership Award based on the firm’s innovation and customer impact in the global AD security and recovery market.
Commenting on Semperis, Frost & Sullivan Industry Principal, Sarah Pavlak said; “Semperis has unmatched experience in breach preparedness and incident response to Active Directory and other identity-based cyberattacks. Semperis’ solution-based approach focuses not only on their premier technology to meet customer challenges but also best practices and guidance for people and processes, setting them apart from their competitors.”
For more information about Semperis’ directory protection technology and expertise or to learn about open career opportunities, please visit their website; Semperis.com.
