- Enterprise IoT security company Armis was recently acquired for $1.1 billion. These are the details.
Armis, a leader in enterprise IoT security, announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Insight Partners in order to further strengthen its market dominance in unmanaged device security. As part of the agreement, Insight is going to acquire Armis for $1.1 billion with participation from CapitalG for $100 million and rollover from certain existing stockholders.
Armis is essentially the leading agentless and enterprise-class security platform to address the new threat landscape of unmanaged and IoT devices. And Fortune 1000 companies trust the company’s unique out-of-band sensing technology to discover and analyze all managed, unmanaged, and IoT devices ranging from traditional devices like laptops and smartphones to new unmanaged smart devices such as smart TVs, webcams, printers, HVAC systems, industrial control systems, medical devices, etc.
Going forward, Armis will continue to operate independently and will be fully managed by its two co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov (CEO) and Nadir Izrael (CTO) along with the executive team while leveraging the support of Insight’s industry-leading business strategy and ScaleUp division called Onsite.
“Insight is one of the most sophisticated software investors in the sector, and it is due to the depth of their domain expertise that they really understand the enterprise IoT device challenge we are looking to solve, and the size of the market opportunity. We considered growth rounds and strategic offers, but by partnering with Insight we have the best of both worlds – operational support and independence, both of which were important in our decision to take on a scaleup partner this early in our company journey,” said Dibrov. “We are thankful for the support we received from our investors at Sequoia, Tenaya, Bain, and Red Dot; and we, as well as the whole Armis team, are very excited to have Insight working alongside us as we enter this next phase, accelerating our platform and growth.”
Gartner reported that there will be 25 billion connected devices by 2021. And the challenge faced is that these unmanaged devices have no security and represent the fastest-growing attack landscape for organizations globally with attacks up 300% last year. And Armis reports that by next year, up to 90% of all devices will be unmanaged and unsecured — which is dramatically increasing potential vector points for attack and creating a massive security gap within businesses and organizations.
“One of the biggest challenges keeping CIOs and CISOs up at night is how to secure the unmanaged devices proliferating through their businesses, from manufacturing floors to hospital rooms, from airports to boardrooms. These devices – capturing and creating business critical information, working on production lines, or administering patient care – have no protection and they need a security solution,” added Izrael. “The exponential growth of Armis to date illustrates just how critical securing unmanaged devices is for businesses. With the backing of Insight, we will continue to expand our world-class technology to help identify devices, track their behavior and respond to the threats that target them.”
Armis is known for letting organizations safely embrace unmanaged and IoT devices throughout their business. In 2018, Armis grew significantly and continued its tremendous growth in its current fiscal year across all verticals from the Fortune 100 (including 25% of the Fortune 50) to the Global 2000 to mid-size organizations across all verticals, including high tech, healthcare, industrial, retail, smart cities/building, transportation, etc. Some of Armis’ customers include Allergan, Mondelēz, Oracle, and Sysco Foods.
“Armis is one of the most ground-breaking enterprise data-centric security solutions that is actively protecting modern businesses today. Having achieved exponential growth to date, we are proud to be the partner Armis can leverage to help execute their vision of protecting unmanaged devices proliferating every vertical around the world. We see the huge problem they are solving,” said Jeff Horing, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners. “Armis has established themselves as the leader in the enterprise IoT security space, and we believe this team and their technology will continue to transform the way unmanaged devices are secured.”
The closing of the deal is expected to occur in February. And it is subject to customary conditions and approvals.
“The strength of Israeli security software is unquestionable, and we are thrilled to be the scaleup partner Armis has selected to continue their explosive growth journey. We’ve spoken with their users who have told us how powerful the Armis platform is at device discovery, classification, and continuous threat assessment. In a world of unmanaged devices, Armis’ technology is a game-changer,” stated Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners.
In conjunction with the acquisition, Horing, Wardi, and Gili Raanan, Chairman of Armis and General Partner at Sequoia Israel, are joining the Armis Board of Directors.
“Armis is the largest Israeli Cybersecurity acquisition of a private company ever and this is an important milestone in the Armis journey, building a substantial stand-alone Cybersecurity power-house,” noted Raanan.
