In a launch from so-called stealth mode, Armis, an enterprise IoT security company, has announced $17 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital. Armis is a technology platform designed to let enterprises see and control compromised and unmanaged devices and rogue networks accessing their systems, with the goal of eliminating the IoT security blind spot that exists in many businesses. Armis will demonstrate its product publicly for the first time at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit.
According to Gartner, there are 8.4 billion connected things in use worldwide this year, which will number 20.4 billion by 2020. This fast growing, dynamic ecosystem of everything from smartphones to webcams and keyboards presents a complex security challenge. In early deployments, Armis reportedly has shown that businesses are unaware of 40 percent of the devices in their environment. They have limited visibility into which devices are accessing their networks, which exposes them to botnet attacks, network breaches, ransomware, and data loss.
Armis’ solution will provide an agentless IoT security platform that gives enterprises a complete view into activity and threats on devices and networks. Armis integrates with existing IT infrastructure and gives businesses visibility into and management over any device, whether on or off the corporate network. With Armis, enterprises are able to gain the productivity benefits of using IoT devices without sacrificing security.
“Enterprise security has a huge blind spot,” said Yevgeny Dibrov, CEO and co-founder, Armis. “The recent botnet attacks like Mirai, Hajime, and Persirai show how new IoT devices are being exploited and attacked. The fact is you cannot put an agent on most of the devices in an organization today, which means we need a new approach. We built Armis to give enterprises complete visibility into all devices in their environment without requiring an agent. We can stop devices from compromising corporate assets, regardless of whether those devices are managed by IT.”
Founded in late 2015, and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with an office in Tel Aviv, the Armis team is comprised of top engineering talent from Israel and experienced Silicon Valley technology leaders. Dibrov was on the executive team at Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2015. He served with co-founder and CTO Nadir Izrael in the selective Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Forces, whose alumni also founded Check Point, Waze, and Wix.
“My job is to stay ahead of the bad guys -- especially when it comes to IoT. Armis allows me to see and control every device using any networking protocol, as well as all the networks in and around our labs. The fact that Armis can block unwanted connections is critical to our security strategy,” said Steven Lentz, Chief Security Officer at Samsung Research America.
Edited by
Alicia Young
