USA – Area 1 Security, a Redwood City, Calif.-based preemptive email security company, closed $25m in growth funding.
The round was led by new investors ForgePoint Capital, along with current investors Kleiner Perkins, Icon Ventures and Top Tier Capital. Alberto Yepez, co-founder and managing director of ForgePoint Capital, will join Area 1’s Board of Directors. The company intends to use the funds for product R&D investment, and expansion of its go-to-market resources with a specific focus on an multi-tier channel strategy. Led by newly appointed CEO Patrick Sweeney*, Area 1 Security preemptively stops Business Email Compromise, malware, ransomware and targeted phishing attacks. It also offers a performance-based pricing model, called Pay-per-Phish. The company’s solutions are used by Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, healthcare, critical infrastructure and other industries, to preempt targeted phishing attacks, improve their cybersecurity posture, and change outcomes. In the first half of 2020 alone, the company intercepted and prevented $273 million in active financial cyber fraud perpetrated through sophisticated Business Email Compromise (BEC) phish. They also blocked millions of phish missed by cloud email providers and legacy SEG defenses, underscoring the enormity of the problem organizations face. Area 1 is cloud-native, a Certified Microsoft Partner, and Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year for Security. * Sweeney comes to Area 1 Security with more than 25 years of high-tech executive and general management experience. He most recently served as CEO of Talari Networks (sold to Oracle in 2019) and held senior executive roles at Dell and SonicWall, where he drove growth and financial performance. 29/06/2020
