Israel wins second-largest number of cybersecurity deals globally
Israeli startups BioCatch, Cylus and D-ID are among the 26 cybersecurity firms selected by CB Insights that are transforming the industry
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
Israel accounted for the second-largest number of cybersecurity deals globally, behind the US and ahead of the UK, a new report compiled by New York data firm CB Insights shows.
The report shows that Israel accounted for seven percent of the cybersecurity global deal share in the years 2013-2017, still way behind the US, which accounted for 69% of the global deal share, but higher than the UK, which accounted for 6% of the pie. Canada accounted for 3% and China for 2% of the global deal share, the report showed.
The report selects 29 cybersecurity startups — which it calls cyber defenders — who are early- to mid-stage “high-momentum companies pioneering technology with the potential to transform cybersecurity,” the report said.
Out of these, six are Israeli firms, ranking the so-called Startup Nation with the second-highest concentration of cyber defenders, after the United States.
The Israeli firms that made the list are: BioCatch, a startup that analyzes behavioral and physiological parameters to help with fraud prevention and detection; Aqua Security, which enables enterprises to secure their virtual container environments and bridges the gap between DevOps and IT security; IRONSCALES, a maker of anti-phishing technologies; and D-ID, which has developed a technology to help enterprises protect users’ faces from unauthorized, automated face recognition technologies.
Israel’s Minerva Labs which makes cybersecurity products designed to defeat advanced malware, and Cylus, which helps railway companies detect cyber attacks in their operational network, including their signaling systems and trains — and block attackers before they can cause any damage, are also among the six.
The report said that of the 26 companies selected for its 2018 cyber defenders report, 62% of them have their headquarters in the US, mostly in California. The next highest concentration of cyber defenders is located in Israel, followed by the UK with three. Sweden and the Netherlands have one each.
The tech companies were assessed on a number of categories, including companies that hunt for fraud, next generation cloud security, human-factor security, crowd-sourced security, and makers of infrastructure defense systems.
Unicorns — privately held tech companies valued at over $1 billion, that have raised funding past the series C stage, and companies that have not raised funding since 2016 — were excluded from the list, CB Insights said.
Last year, 2017, was a record year for cybersecurity, with annual global deals and financing of cybersecurity firms reaching $7.7 billion in 552 deals, up from $3.84 billion in 2016 and from $1.91 billion in 2013, according to the CB Insights report.
Three Israeli firms were mentioned in the CB Insights cybersecurity report last year.
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