Randori, a Boston, Mass-headquartered startup that sprung from stealth 19 months ago toting a twist on red teams, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Harmony Partners, and supplemented by existing investors Accomplice, .406 Ventures and Legion Capital.
Randori's funding announcement did not mention a channel partner strategy. But details about a partner program for VARs, MSPs and MSSPs (managed security services providers) will surface in 2021, a Randori spokesperson tells ChannelE2E.
The company launched in October, 2018 with $9.8 million in seed money led by the same investors. Randori comes at probing a company’s security defenses from a different angle. Rather than relying on network perimeter scanning or penetration testing, its Attack Platform, which debuted in February, mimics advanced hacks and threats that companies face. The idea is to give chief information security officers (CISOs) a greater understanding of “the cognitive processes behind how attackers plan, target and execute attacks.” In that sense, Randori positions itself as a “trusted adversary to front-line security teams,” said Brian Hazzard, Randori’s chief executive and co-founder.
Randori is betting that emulated real-world attacks will more accurately identify where security programs break down. The process begins with just an email address. From there, here’s how the Attack Platform operates:
- Automatically discovers and monitors the attack surface, using the same surveillance techniques as the adversary.
- Identifies unexpected gaps in security defenses by testing them against real-world exploits and automated attack tooling.
- Breaks down issues, providing the insight security teams need to understand and promptly respond.
- Continuously validates the real-world impact of security improvements over time.
Randori said it will use a portion of the capital infusion to expand the platform and support its team of offensive hackers who develop and weaponize new attack techniques, exploits and tooling to strengthen its technology. The company, which is currently hiring engineers and personnel in marketing, sales and operations, plans to double its workforce by the end of the year. Along those lines, some of the new funds will go to widening its sales reach, executing go-to-market strategies and developing resources for its customers. Right now, the company said it works with "dozens of organizations" in the energy, financial services, health care, entertainment and transportation segments.
“Having led red teams for more than a decade, I know first hand that the most challenging organization to beat is the one adept at understanding an attacker’s next move,” said David Wolpoff, Randori’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “With this funding, we’ll be growing our platform and our teams while pushing the market to a new understanding of what ‘secure’ truly looks like in the modern attack landscape,” he said. “Now, more than ever, CISOs need security programs capable of anticipating, rather than reacting to, threats. To do that, you first need to understand what’s possible.”
As for the new funding, Mark Lotke, Harmony Partners’ founder and managing partner, said Randori is "uniquely positioned to help organizations build resilience into their cybersecurity programs by delivering an elite red team experience that’s economical to the bottom line.”
