Expel, a transparent managed security provider, has closed a $20m Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners.
The round, which brings total funding to $27.5m to date, featured participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, Greycroft, Lightbank, New Enterprise Associates, Paladin Capital Group and Profile Capital Management. Along with the funding, Ariel Tseitlin, a partner at Scale Venture Partners, will join Expel’s board of directors.
Based in Herndon, Va, Expel claims to be the antidote for companies trapped in failed relationships with their managed security service provider (MSSP) and those looking to avoid the frustration of working with one in the first place.
“Security is now a board-level concern,” said Tseitlin. “But even when companies make responsible and sustained investments, security teams are stretched by too many products delivering reams of alerts without enough security talent to prioritise them.
“Expel amplifies existing security investments through clear, transparent managed security that helps chief information security officers (CISOs) effectively manage risk.”
Expel replaces alerts with answers using a new approach called transparent managed security. Its analysts use customers’ existing security products to monitor their environment 24×7 and investigate suspicious activity. When Expel spots an attack, it provides the customer gets answers that explain exactly what to do, including how to fix the root cause of problems that happen over and over again. Customers can watch investigations as they’re unfolding and take action immediately – all within a shared interface.
“Managed security service providers (MSSPs) have failed to deliver on the value they promised. They’ve beaten their customers into submission and taught them to expect less,” added Dave Merkel, co-founder and CEO at Expel. “They’re alert factories that take 1,000 alerts from customers’ devices, repackage them into 100 alerts and promptly toss them back over the fence to the customer. It’s 2018. We don’t think grown security professionals should still be chasing alerts. Expel helps CISOs get out of that rut so they can focus on making decisions and managing risk.”
In the cybersecurity space, Armis, an enterprise IoT security company, recently closed a $30m Series B funding round. Red Dot, a Temasek-backed Venture Capital fund based in Israel, led the round and was joined by Bain Capital Ventures and return investors Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital.
U.S. Bank (USB) also recently partnered with Plug and Play to increase its innovation in cybersecurity efforts. USB has joined Plug and Play’s Cybersecurity Innovation Platform as it prepares to kick off its first cohort.
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