LightCyber Lands $20M Series B Funding, Looks To Pump Up Marketing, Channel Partners

LightCyber, a security startup focused on the behavioral attack detection market, has landed $20 million in Series B funding.

The funding round was led by Access Industries and investor Shlomo Kramer. Battery Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners and Amplify Partners also participated, the company said Wednesday. It adds to the $10 million in funds the Ramat Gan, Israel-based company revealed in September.

The new influx of capital will allow LightCyber to continue building on the momentum it has seen in the security market, Chief Marketing Officer Jason Matlof said.

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"It's a great validation of us as a company, the market we're playing in, our products and the success we've had," Matlof said.

Matlof said 2015 was all about zeroing in on the market for the company's product -- which delivers network and endpoint visibility and context into attacks that have already penetrated an environment -- and proving there is a repeatable customer base for the solution.

The coming year will be a year of "very explosive growth," Matlof said, using the latest round of funding as fuel for the fire toward reaching its goal of 400 percent year-over-year sales growth.

To achieve that, Matlof said, LightCyber will primarily use the funding to invest in sales and marketing. As a 100 percent channel company, he said, that means the startup will be funneling significant resources to partners, including investments in channel lead generation, and head count around the channel, events and recruitment.

Stephen Harrison, CEO at the EverSec Group, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., has been involved with LightCyber since 2014. He said he was pleased to see how the vendor leveraged the funding from its previous round and is looking forward to how it will leverage this new round as customers have grown more aware of the company's solutions.

"I was pleased with where they went with [the initial round] with implementing a strong field sales force and doing quite a good job with marketing," Harrison said. "I'm obviously just as excited with what they're able to do with this significantly larger B round. … It's just the opportune time."

Harrison said he would like to see LightCyber continue to increase its sales force and marketing efforts, while keeping true to its "core detection capabilities."

Harrison said it is a validation for him of the company's technology and go-to-market strategy that it was able to grab new backing in an increasingly competitive climate for venture capital funding.

"We went through this feeding frenzy, and now I think everyone is realizing that only so many of these companies will survive. It's certainly a big show of confidence that LightCyber was able to get this level of funding," Harrison said.

Matlof agreed, adding that for partners, the funding serves as an additional sign that the vendor is a stable partner bet.

"LightCyber will be around because they have the financial stability and viability to survive, while others who don’t will flop," Matlof said. "The market is collapsing and people are getting extended. It's a terrible market for us to have done this. To raise this much capital with a new investor and an up round is exceptional. It's exciting for us."

Matlof said partners can expect to see "heavy growth in partner recruitment" in the months to come, with additional marketing funding coming in the second half of the year.