- Financing Accelerates Automated Penetration Testing Platform Market Expansion

Cyber Security Risk Validation startup, Pcysys [https://www.pcysys.com/], 
announced today that it has completed a $10 million series-A funding round led 
by Canadian VC, Awz Ventures, along with Blackstone. The company, which has 
developed a platform for Automated Penetration Testing, has raised $15 million 
to date.

Pcysys (an acronym for "Proactive Cyber Systems"), was founded in November 2015 
by Arik Liberzon and Arik Faingold and has been managed by CEO Amitai Ratzon 
since 2018. The company has 50 employees and is approaching 100 paying 
enterprise customers, across 15 verticals, including Banking, Insurance, Asset 
Managers, Retail, Energy, and Healthcare, in North America, Europe and Israel.

Automating red teaming and penetration testing activities, Pcysys' PenTera™ 
platform uses algorithms to scan and ethically penetrate the corporate network 
with the latest hacking techniques, prioritizing remediation efforts with a 
threat-facing perspective. The platform enables organizations to focus their 
remediation efforts on the vulnerabilities that take part in a damaging 
"kill-chain" without the need to chase down thousands of vulnerabilities that 
cannot be truly exploited towards data theft, encryption or service disruption.

"Our Blackstone Innovations technology team is a strong believer in automating 
risk validation and believes that the PenTera platform will evolve to become a 
market leader in the years to come," said Blackstone CISO, Adam Fletcher. 
"We've seen firsthand the benefits of the Pcysys Platform in our day-to-day 
vigilance in keeping our cybersecurity defenses challenged and tuned." 

"We are honored to have Awz and Blackstone supporting us in this round of 
funding, sharing our vision of continuous risk validation," said Amitai Ratzon, 
Pcysys CEO. "Our customers have been investing millions in defense 
technologies, without the ability to effectively validate against the real 
threat. PenTera has finally made this possible, paving the way to 
revolutionizing risk validation, as we know it today. Pcysys intends to use the 
additional funding to expand its sales and support functions in North America 
and EMEA and to further develop its enterprise-grade technology".

"Since our first investment in 2017, Awz has believed in the Pcysys management 
team and the company's compelling value proposition", said Awz Ventures Founder 
and Managing Partner, Yaron Ashkenazi. "We are proud of Pcysys and the 
incredible progress that they made in such a short period of time. We were 
delighted to also lead this series-A fundraising round and we believe the 
company will continue to build on its success. Together with our new partner, 
Blackstone Innovation, we are confident Pcysys can become a global leader in 
the field of cyber security and risk validation. 

About Blackstone

Blackstone is one of the world's leading investment firms. We seek to create 
positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies 
we invest in, and the communities in which we work. We do this by using 
extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our 
asset management businesses, with $554 billion in assets under management, 
include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, public debt 
and equity, growth equity, opportunistic, non-investment grade credit, real 
assets and secondary funds, all on a global basis. Further information is 
available at www.blackstone.com. Follow Blackstone on Twitter @Blackstone 
[https://twitter.com/blackstone].

About Awz Ventures

Established in 2016 by Managing Partner, Mr. Yaron Ashkenazi, Awz 
(www.awzventures.com) is a Canadian hub for investment in cyber security, 
intelligence and physical security AI-based technologies from Israel, a global 
leader in these sectors. Awz manages $100M between its first two venture 
capital funds, Awz HLS Fund I and II, having made early stage investments in 14 
companies to date.  Alongside Mr. Ashkenazi, Awz is led by Advisory Committee 
President, the Rt. Hon. Stephen J. Harper, the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, 
and Founder & Board Chair, Mr. Ed Sonshine. Awz management and advisors also 
include former senior executives from Israeli and Canadian agencies (Mossad, 
ISA, CSIS, CAF), and global business experts.

About Pcysys

Pcysys (www.pcysys.com) delivers PenTera™, an automated penetration-testing 
platform, that assesses and reduces corporate cybersecurity risk. By applying 
the hacker's perspective, our software identifies, analyzes and prioritizes 
remediation of cyber defense vulnerabilities. Hundreds of security 
professionals and service providers around the world use PenTera to perform 
continuous machine-based penetration tests that improve their immunity against 
cyber-attacks across their organization networks.

Photo:https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1028478/Pcysys_Blackstone.jpg
Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/832279/Pcysys_Logo.jpg 

Media contact: 

Aviv Cohen, Pcysys CMO 
aviv@pcysys.com

Source: Pcysys