💰Security, Funded #59 - Public cyber stocks beat the market and ransomware attacks have increased

Hey there,

I hope you had a great weekend!

To all those who celebrated Labor Day, I hope you enjoyed some time off with friends or family.

In this week's issue

• Ransomware attacks have increased
• A lot of public earnings reports last week
• What earnings reports to watch for this week

Public cybersecurity stocks have typically had an uncorrelated relationship to economic slowdowns and downturns. Cybersecurity stocks typically "only go up" regardless of what else is happening in the rest of the economy. 📈

While that still seems to be true (for now), several public cybersecurity companies announced earnings reports last week with mixed responses from investors.

A few highlights:

• Crowdstrike ($CRWD) dropped ~5% after beating earnings expectations.
• Secureworks ($SCWX) dropped ~11% after slightly beating earning expectations.
• SentinelOne ($S) dropped ~12% after beating earnings expectations.
• Okta ($OKTA) had a strong earnings report but the stock tanked ~33%.
• Hashicorp ($HCP) increased ~12% after beating earnings expectations.

The net of this? Cybersecurity stocks are still a place investors want to be and that demand, while sometimes mixed, is still likely to yield positively.

What to watch for this week:

• Zscaler (ZS) will report its earnings on Thursday (Sept 9th).

Let's dive in.

📊 Market News

• ZScaler ($ZS) to announce earnings this week (more)
• Ransomware attacks increased 24% in Q2 2022 (more)
• CrowdStrike Q2 2023 (fiscal 2022) results did not set off fireworks (more)

💰 Funding Summary

• 8 companies raised $94.7M across 6 unique product categories
• 5 companies were acquired or had a merger event across 4 unique product categories

🧩 Funding by Product Category

• $50.0M for Managed Services Provider (MSP)
• $14.4M for Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• $14.0M for Endpoint Protection
• $7.1M for Remote Browser Isolation
• $6.7M for Identity Verification
• $2.5M for Threat & Vulnerability Management (TVM)

🗣️ SPONSOR

🏢 Funding By Company

• Cassava Technologies, a managed services provider (MSP), raised a $50.0M Venture Round from C5 Capital. (more)
• Devicie, a mobile device management (MDM) and endpoint security platform, raised a $14.0M Series A from Insight Partners. (more)
• Zilla Security, an identity access governance and management platform, raised a $13.5M Series A from FirstMark and Tola Capital. (more)
• LayerX Security, a remote browser isolation platform, raised a $7.1M Seed from Glilot Capital Partners.
• tokenproof, an identity authentication and verification platform for NFTs, raised a $5.0M Seed from Penny Jar Capital. (more)
• Muninn, a multi-product threat detection platform leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), raised a $2.5M Seed from Luminar Ventures. (more)
• Silence laboratories, a Web3 identity authentication and verification platform leveraging multi-party computing (MPC), raised a $1.7M Seed from Pi Ventures. (more)
• heylogin, a password manager application, raised a $900.0K Pre-Seed round.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• CUATROi, a managed services provider (MSP), was acquired by Cerberus Sentinel for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Intelligence Fusion, a threat intelligence platform, was acquired by Sigma7 for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Natuvion, a professional services firm focused on security SAP systems, was acquired by NTT DATA Business Solutions for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Outflank, a professional services company focused on red teaming and security awareness training, was acquired by HelpSystems for an undisclosed amount. (more)
• Threat Protector, a managed security services provider (MSSP), was acquired by Telesystem for an undisclosed amount. (more)

🔐 Secure The Job

If you're looking for new opportunities (actively or passively), I've got two ways to help:

• Return on Security Job Board - Browse the jobs I curate each week and apply for what matches your interests.
• Return on Security Talent Collective - If you're open to hearing about new opportunities, apply to my talent collective to get personally matched with high-growth, high-upside opportunities. You can join publicly or anonymously, and leave anytime. And it's completely free for candidates.

Are you hiring? Post a role or request access to start meeting world class candidates open to new opportunities. Learn more or request access here.

📆 Special Events

I'm on the CISO advisory board for DataTribe and they are a top-notch group, so you won't want to miss this if you're raising funds.

📚 Great Reads

• Newsletter: Payload Space - A recent newsletter I came across that's all about the business of policy and space and is really fascinating. All puns aside, investments in space technology (including the security of SpaceTech) is going to the moon 🚀
• Why the Twilio Breach Cuts So Deep - The phishing attack on the SMS giant exposes the dangers of B2B companies to the entire tech ecosystem.
• Daniel Miessler on Mudge vs. Twitter - Daniel Miessler's take on when companies hire named personalities to take on cybersecurity.

You can see the full list of curated posts across all issues here, and you can submit an article, post, tweet, or video here and it can show up in the newsletter!

🧪 Labs

One more thing! I'm revamping the referral rewards for the newsletter to include new items and discounts from the Return on Security Shop like this 👇

👋 Thanks

Have questions, comments, or feedback about this issue? I'd love to hear from you. Reach out on Twitter or reply directly to the newsletter version of this issue.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Mike P