Cybersecurity training is a kind of issues that everybody has to do however not one thing everybody essentially appears to be like ahead to.
Living Security is an Austin-based startup out to vary cybersecurity training one thing you stay up for, not dread. And the corporate has simply closed on a $14 million Series B to proceed its enlargement past cybersecurity consciousness training into human threat administration.
Washington, D.C. based-Updata Partners led the financing, which additionally included participation from current backers earlier buyers Silverton Partners, Active Capital, Rain Capital and SaaS Venture Partners. The funding comes after $5 million collection A, led by Austin-based Silverton, raised final April.
Husband and spouse Drew and Ashley Rose based Living Security in June 2017 with the mission of creating cybersecurity training much less boring and more practical through gamified studying with reside motion immersive storylines, role-based micro modules and reporting.
Living Security launched with its flagship product — Cyber Escape Room. When the pandemic hit, the startup introduced its in-person training periods on-line via the launch of CyberEscape Online.
With extra folks working remotely, the necessity for the kind of providing Living Security supplies has change into much more paramount, contemplating how many individuals use private gadgets for skilled causes, amongst different issues. Employees are extra weak than ever to inadvertently offering entry factors into the networks of the enterprises the place they work — whether or not via social engineering, phishing or different strategies.
Today, Living Security works with over 100 massive enterprises to coach their international workforces to higher defend delicate information and safe their organizations. The startup’s buyer checklist is spectacular, and consists of massive enterprises akin to CVS Health, Mastercard, Verizon, MassMutual, Biogen, AmerisourceBergen, Hewlett Packard, JPMorgan and Target.
So it’s not an enormous shock that in 2020, Living Security tripled its income and worker headcount and greater than doubled its buyer rely. The firm declined to supply laborious income figures, saying solely that ARR grew almost 200% final yr.
“We have seen a significant increase in account growth and expansion in existing accounts..largely in part due to the scalability of our digital solution,” CEO Ashley Rose stated.
With the success of its escape rooms and gamified training, Living Security’s crew then requested themselves how they might make their efforts “more predictable.”
“We added risk management and scoring so program and security owners could become more targeted and focused on the delivery of their training,” Rose stated.
So now Living Security goals to make use of behavioral information and analytics to measure and handle human threat. It plans to take that information and supply “predictive interventions” to workers.
“We’re targeted on ‘How do we turn people from our greatest risk, to our greatest assets in cybersecurity?” Rose said. “That’s our large imaginative and prescient for the corporate.”
Image Credits: Living Security
With its “Unify” human threat administration platform, Living Security needs to supply an much more scalable answer. The firm additionally plans to make use of its new capital towards increasing its geographic attain and scaling each direct and channel gross sales efforts.
Currently, Living Security has 55 workers with the objective of getting 90 by yr’s finish.
Deb Walter, director of data safety training and consciousness at AmerisourceBergen, stated she first engaged with Living Security in 2017 when she requested its CyberSecurity Card sport.
“I wanted to gamify how I presented training,” she remembers.
Introducing episodic gamification and its “bingeable” content material into her training program was an enormous hit with workers, in response to Walter.
“Their new platform is enabling us to deploy an ‘Information security academy’ to encourage associates and contractors to use several modes of training to earn points and track themselves on a leaderboard,” she stated.
Updata General Partner Jon Seeber, who’s taking a seat on Living Security’s board with the funding, stated his agency noticed “breakout potential” within the startup’s platform.
“It comes as close as you can to closing the loop between people and the systems on which they’re operating,” he stated.
Plus, he stated, it does it in a approach that avoids the compliance-focused, “check-the-box” mindset that so typically dominates employee-focused cybersecurity options.
