Cybersecurity Startup XM Cyber, Co-Founded By Ex-Mossad Chief, Raises $17M

Israeli cybersecurity startup XM Cyber, co-founded by former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, raised $17 million in a Series B funding round with investors including Macquarie Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Our Innovation Fund, and Swarth Group, according to a company announcement Thursday.

XM Cyber was founded in 2016 by Pardo and his co-founders Noam Erez, a 25-year veteran of the Israeli intelligence community, and Boaz Gorodissky, a 30-year veteran of the community. Based in Herzliya, the company developed a fully automated advanced persistent threat simulation platform to continuously expose attack. The startup looks at threats from a hacker’s point of view – its tagline is “defense by offense.”

The latest funding round brings XM Cyber’s total capital raised close to $50 million.

The company indicated that it will use the new investment to grow its research and development department, expand its sales and marketing operations worldwide, as well as expand its cloud-based capabilities. In December, XM Cyber introduced the first BAS solution that can simulate attacks on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

XM Cyber says its customers include major financial institutions, governments, manufacturing operations, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure organizations across the US, Europe and Asia, with a growing presence in Latin America. 

“XM Cyber’s evolution as a company has impressed us, and we believe that its solutions have become an increasing necessity for enterprises looking to improve their security posture,” said Dan Phillips, executive director at Macquarie Capital. “We look forward to working with the XM Cyber team as it expands globally and continues to defeat the most sophisticated cyberthreats and attacks.”

XM Cyber CEO and co-founder Noam Erez said: “In an era where business has dramatically shifted to remote work due to the Covid-19 crisis, millions of endpoints are being introduced to corporate networks, significantly expanding the attack surface for cyber criminals and making XM Cyber more essential than ever.

“The ability to secure significant funding during a global pandemic is a testament to our product and team. We are grateful to our investors for this vote of confidence and look forward to their continued support,” he added.

Last month, the company was awarded the 2020 Fortress Cyber Security Awards in the threat modeling category by the Business Intelligence Group

XM Cyber has offices in Israel, the US, and the UK.

SEE ALSO: Spy Games: Ex-Mossad Chief’s Cybersecurity Startup Counters Attacks With A Hacker’s Mindset