Cyber security is a hot sector, and it's interesting to see the corporates investing significant sums alongside financial investors.
Since 2009, corporate investments in cybersecurity have been primarily split among early-stage and mid-stage deals, which took 38% and 39% respectively. Late-stage deals took 23% of corporate cybersecurity activity over the period. Corporates have participated in a number of larger cybersecurity financings in 2014 YTD including Skyhigh Networks‘ $40M Series C (Salesforce Ventures), Centrify‘s $42M Series E (Samsung Ventures, Fortinet, Docomo Capital), and Ionic Security‘s $25.5M Series B (Google Ventures) to name a few. Early-stage corporate deals in cybersecurity this year have gone to startups with a diversity of focus areas ranging from authentication APIs (Authy) to crowd-sourced cyber security intelligence (ThreatStream) to browser traffic encryption (Zenmate).
