Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE: ESLT) announced today that Charlesbank Technology Opportunities Fund, a fund managed by Charlesbank Capital Partners has invested $70 million in Elbit Systems’ Israeli subsidiary Cyberbit Ltd.
Charlesbank has invested $22 million in Cyberbit and paid $48 million for some of Elbit Systems’ shares in Cyberbit. As a result of the investment and sale of equity holdings, Elbit Systems has become a minority shareholder in Cyberbit. Claridge Israel L.P., an existing shareholder of Cyberbit, which invested $30 million in Cyberbit in June 2018, also participated in this round of investment.
Cyberbit is engaged in commercial training systems for cybersecurity teams.
Elbit Systems president and CEO Bezhalel Machlis said, "Preparing the human element for cyber-attacks is one of the most acute cybersecurity challenges. The investment of Charlesbank in Cyberbit is a recognition of Cyberbit’s market-leading position and the growth potential of Cyberbit’s training platform -the Cyber Range. I am confident that this investment will allow Cyberbit to realize its full growth potential."
Cyberbit plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its cyber range product and to grow global sales and marketing to meet the increasing demand for its product. With this funding, more cybersecurity teams will benefit from hyper-realistic training through Cyberbit Range, ensuring their organizations are fully prepared for cyberattacks and addressing the global cybersecurity skill shortage.
Cyberbit was founded in 2015 to solve a critical industry challenge: Cybersecurity teams are not prepared to respond effectively to various attacks, as they have never experienced the attacks before, and are therefore forced to learn "on the job."
The Cyberbit Range platform addresses this challenge by introducing a new approach that immerses security teams in a virtual security operations center (SOC), where they practice responding to live cyberattacks. Trainees use commercial security tools identical to the tools used at their workplace to detect, investigate and respond to simulated attacks. The product provides comprehensive performance assessment, feedback and ranking. This breakthrough combination of real-world attacks, real-world networks, real-world security tools and accurate performance assessment allows security teams to train for and experience attacks before the fact. Organizations can quickly identify gaps in their security team's performance, fix them and ensure their teams are fully prepared when the real attack occurs.
In 2019 Cyberbit launched its cloud-based cyber range offering enabling customers to participate in cyber range exercises on demand, from any location. During the Covid-19 outbreak, when most organizations were forced to cancel training for their security teams due to travel restrictions and lockdowns, Cyberbit's cloud customers were able to seamlessly transition their security teams to remote training and maintain their skill levels. Cyberbit is seeing a spike in the demand for its cloud-based offering during Covid-19 to support remote training needs.
Cyberbit CEO Adi Dar said, "We are experiencing record demand for our cyber range as organizations recognize the importance of real-world cyberattack simulation to assess and prepare their security teams. The investment from Charlesbank will allow us to solidify our position as a best-of-breed product and allow us to accelerate our global expansion."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 19, 2020
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