Security awareness training firm KnowBe4 last week announced a Series C funding round that valued the company at more than $800 million.
The round was led by global investment firm KKR, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures. KnowBe4 says it will receive a sizable minority investment of up to $50 million. The funds will be used to strengthen the company’s international expansion and to enhance its suite of security training modules.
KnowBe4 previously raised over $43 million, including $30 million in a Series B funding round announced in October 2017. It also acquired four companies in the past two years, including Securable.io, Popcorn Training, exploqii and, most recently, El Pescador. The latest acquisition has helped the company enter the Brazilian market.
KnowBe4 provides training and a phishing attack simulation platform designed to help organizations address the security weaknesses introduced by their employees. The training should make it less likely for employees to fall for ransomware, CEO fraud and other attacks that involve social engineering.
The company says its solutions are used by more than 23,000 organizations around the world.
“We’ve seen global spending on cyber security solutions grow to $48 billion, yet despite this investment, breaches, and the severity of these breaches, continue to be on the rise – over 90 percent of which involve inadvertent human error,” said Stephen Shanley, director at KKR.
“We believe employees represent an organization’s first and last line of defense. That is exactly why we are so excited to be investing in KnowBe4, the leading cyber security solution that goes beyond the infrastructure and prioritizes empowering employees to make smarter security decisions,” Shanley added.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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