Softbank backs $400m investment in Israeli industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty – The Times of Israel
Japanese investment giant SoftBank co-led a $400 million investment in Israeli cybersecurity firm Claroty, a maker of software to defend factories and industrial plants from cybersecurity attacks, according to a joint announcement Wednesday.
SoftBank’s Israel operations are headed by former Mossad head Yossi Cohen, who stepped down from the security agency position in June after more than five years on the job. As part of the investment, Cohen will join Claroty’s board of directors.
The new investment comes six months after Claroty raised $140 million, which the company hailed then as the “largest investment ever” within the industrial cybersecurity sector.
Claroty also announced an agreement to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Medigate, focused on securing connected medical devices within healthcare provider networks, as it moves forward with a mission “to secure all cyber-physical systems (CPS) across industrial, healthcare, and enterprise environments – the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT).”
The company’s CEO, Yaniv Vardi said Wednesday that by “combining Claroty and Medigate’s deep domain expertise and specialized technologies into a single platform, we will take a giant leap forward on our mission to secure the ever-expanding universe of XIoT for every connected organization.
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“Our vision is protecting the cyber world and cyber-physical systems in every critical infrastructure organization like oil and gas, automotive, and life sciences, and now healthcare. We want to provide one complete solution for all,” Vardi told The Times of Israel in a phone interview.
Former head of the Mossad Yossi Cohen attends the Jerusalem Post conference, held in Jerusalem, October 12, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In these sectors, “when data is at risk, people are at risk. If you look at the different manufacturing and industrial verticals, people are at risk. Hospitals are the number one vertical with the number of attacks growing – 82% of hospitals reported being under attack,” in the last 18 months or so, said Vardi, citing Medigate research. “It is a vertical that is under attack and we wanted to cover this world.”
“We envision a future where cyber and physical worlds safely connect to support our lives, and with such strong backing from some of the world’s foremost technology investors, we have the resources we need to make this vision a reality,” he added.
Benny Porat, co-founder and chief technology officer of Claroty, told The Times of Israel that the healthcare sector faces very similar cybersecurity issues to the industrial sector. “They have …….