Area 1 Security, a pre-emptive email security solution, has closed its growth equity round on $25m, with ForgePoint Capital leading the round.
Previous Area 1 Security backers Kleiner Perkins, Icon Ventures and Top Tier Capital, also contributed to the round.
In conjunction with the deal, Patrick Sweeney has joined the company as CEO. Prior to this role, Sweeney served as the CEO of Talari Networks and has also held senior executive positions at Dell and SonicWall.
With the capital injection, the company will increase its R&D efforts and expand its go-to-market resources.
Area 1 pre-emptively stops business email compromise, malware, ransomware and targeted phishing attacks. By targeting the early stages of an attack, the company stops around 95% of breaches at their root, it claims.
During the first half of 2020, Area 1 intercepted and prevented $273m in active financial cyber fraud perpetrated through sophisticated business email compromise phishing. It also blocked millions of phishing scams missed by cloud email providers and legacy secure email gateway (SEG) defences, it claims.
Sweeney said, “Email security is fundamentally broken, with phishing attacks consistently breaching defences, leading to significant business losses for organizations large and small. The simple fact is that 95% of breaches begin with a phish disguised as an innocuous email.
“By focusing on the earliest stages of an attack combined with the industry’s leading small pattern analytics technology, Area 1 is uniquely able to bring pre-emption to email security. We stop phishing campaigns prior to their inflicting damage.”
In line with the deal, ForgePoint Capital co-founder and managing director Alberto Yepez will join the Area 1 board of directors.
The cybersecurity company has now raised a total of $82.5m in equity.
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