According to IBM’s Data Breach Report 2021, the average cost of a data breach is $4.24M. As businesses become more reliant on remote work and as employees use more devices (the average employee now uses 2.3 devices), the potential liability increases each day. Axonius’ cybersecurity asset management platform gives enterprises a full inventory of their assets and ensures that these devices are properly being secured across all locations. The platform takes a holistic approach by integrating into existing cybersecurity tools and workflows and ensuring that all devices being used (whether physical or virtual) are compliant with the company’s security protocols. Axonius has also launched a specialized SaaS Management product that addresses the added risk companies face from the use of various modern software applications that are increasingly becoming a part of the enterprise tech stack. Companies like The New York Times, MindBody, Schneider Electric, and AB InBev are all customers and revenue grew 132% YOY in 2021.
AlleyWatch caught up with Axonius CEO and Cofounder Dean Sysman to learn more about how the company is solving the fragmentation of IT that leads to security vulnerabilities, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Axonius raised $200M in Series E funding at a valuation of $2.6 billion. The round brings our total funding to $395M. Accel led the round, with participation from new investors Silver Lake Waterman, Alta Park Capital, and Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl, and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alkeon, Stripes, ICONIQ, and DTCP.
Tell us about the product or service that Axonius offers.
Axonius solves the growing challenge of asset visibility in complex IT environments. Our Cybersecurity Asset Management platform connects to 400+ security and technology products to provide an always up-to-date, unified view of all assets, empowering organizations to uncover security solution coverage gaps and then automatically validate and enforce their security policies.
In January of this year, we also announced Axonius SaaS Management, the first product delivered by AxoniusX, the company’s innovation-focused business unit that launched in June 2021. Axonius SaaS Management is the first platform to combine the benefits of SaaS management and SaaS security posture management, giving security, IT, finance, and risk teams a single source of truth into their SaaS application landscape. It provides visibility into all data types and interconnectivity flows, identifies misconfigurations and security risks, and delivers actionable insights for better management and cost optimization.
What inspired the start of Axonius?
My cofounders, Ofri Shur and Avidor Bartov, and I — alumni of the elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Defense Forces — founded Axonius in 2017 to solve the asset management challenge for cybersecurity. The idea was actually born during my time at another security startup I cofounded, when a large U.S.-based customer hired us to act as a decoy for a suspected hacker. Even though we found evidence of a malicious intruder, when we attempted to find out where they were operating from, we soon learned that the customer had no idea how many devices or tools they had on their network and no way to track down the machine that was hacked. I immediately realized the extent of the problem — you can’t secure what you can’t see — and together, Ofri, Avidor, and I made it our mission to solve it.
How is Axonius different?
Despite access to many tools, every CISO and CIO we speak with acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining a comprehensive asset inventory and knowing whether assets are properly secured. The problem isn’t a lack of data or not having the right tools — the information needed to answer asset-related questions exists in many different silos and tools with no way to correlate information and automate action.
By connecting to all data sources that know about assets, Axonius is the only platform that discovers all assets and automatically correlates data to deliver a credible, always up-to-date asset inventory.
What market does Axonius target and how big is it?
Axonius sells to security, IT, and finance teams across all verticals and in every region worldwide. In 2021, we nearly doubled our customer base, amassing Fortune 500, Global 500, and emerging innovators. We also work with large federal agencies and more than 70 DHS Group F agencies, and we’re listed on CDM APL, SEWP, and GSA. Our successful Axonius Correlated Partner Program has surpassed 150 partners globally in just two years.
What’s your business model?
Axonius generates revenue from our cybersecurity asset management and SaaS management solutions, which are sold directly and through the channel. They are agentless single virtual appliances and can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
Axonius was remote-first long before COVID disrupted the workplace, and we’ll continue to operate that way. Our offices are open for those who wish to come in, but we don’t expect anyone to commute every day of the week. There are far too many benefits to remote work, and for moments when we need to collaborate as a team, we still have the space to do so.
What was the funding process like?
While 2021 was a year with large funding rounds and valuations, there has been a lot of volatility in the market the past few months. From the day we started, our mentality has been mindful of having efficient growth. We’ve never been optimized on valuation. We did this funding round to begin executing our view as a future public company, and to bring on board the investors who see things that way and can help us transform. It is more a strategic opportunity to continue to advance on our vision, not because of financial reasons.
While 2021 was a year with large funding rounds and valuations, there has been a lot of volatility in the market the past few months. From the day we started, our mentality has been mindful of having efficient growth. We’ve never been optimized on valuation. We did this funding round to begin executing our view as a future public company, and to bring on board the investors who see things that way and can help us transform. It is more a strategic opportunity to continue to advance on our vision, not because of financial reasons.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
While I wouldn’t necessarily call them challenges, it’s important to us that we partner with investors who understand our vision and can help us reach it through more growth, more scale, and more innovation.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Every organization has this asset management pain point and needs a solution. We have uniquely approached the issue. Our NPS score, which is one of the ways to measure customer satisfaction, is the highest in the cybersecurity industry.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ll use this funding to continue to expand our team. We are aggressively hiring for sales in the United States, but growing our research and development team is a key priority for us as well.
When we raised our Series D a little more than a year ago, we also announced our intention to use those funds to expand into the APAC region. Now that we’ve executed on that plan and recently expanded into LATAM, Axonius has a presence in every region worldwide. This funding will support continued efforts to expand within these new territories, growing our customer and employee bases.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Like any responsible business leader, it’s important to understand how to make the right investments and partner with the right investors that take a long-term view and aren’t affected by the short-term volatility in the market.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our objective is to continue to deliver value to our customers, be a great place to work for our employees, and become the industry standard as a system of record for every organization’s infrastructure to control complexity.
We plan to continue to expand our platform and product offerings. In addition to SaaS Management, which we recently launched, we’ll continue to explore how we can improve the complexity, cost, and risk associated with organizations’ SaaS applications. SaaS security is a natural expansion of our platform, and we’ll continue to enhance our capabilities within that space.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
It doesn’t have an outdoor section, but I have to mention it regardless: Zuma!
