Why We Invested in Semperis
As specialized cybersecurity investors, one of the ways we source investments is to hunt for emerging technology already seeing rapid adoption from leading enterprises. In the past year, we have done extensive work alongside our Joint Investment Alliance partner, KKR looking into a cyber-attack vector that has gone unsolved by incumbents: Microsoft Active Directory (AD). AD is, according to Forrester, “the identity backbone of the majority of today’s digital infrastructure.” Unfortunately, 90%+ of today’s cyber-attacks involve compromising the AD. Finding a solution to this problem is part of our broader interest in the identity-first security theme that has played into many of our investments, including Ping Identity and Strivacity.
In our search for solutions to this problem, we came across the AD and Azure AD security and recovery solutions offered by Semperis. Semperis is a leading provider of comprehensive hybrid AD protection, serving hundreds of customers, including some of the largest organizations in the world across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, retail, and government agencies. Semperis stands out from the competition with its solution’s unique capability to protect hybrid AD environments throughout the entire lifecycle of an identity attack, combined with the company’s incident response expertise. Semperis’ Gartner-recognized identity threat detection and response (ITDR) solution puts hybrid AD security on autopilot with continuous threat monitoring across on-premises AD and Azure AD, tamperproof tracking, and automatic rollback of malicious changes. In the case of ransomware attacks and other data integrity emergencies, Semperis’ backup and recovery solution automates the AD forest recovery process, significantly reducing downtime, eliminating the risk of malware re-infection, and enabling post-breach forensics to avoid follow-on attacks.
Semperis is an undisputed leader in the growing ITDR space, recently honored by Frost & Sullivan with the 2022 Competitive Strategy Leadership Award based on the company’s innovation and customer impact in the global AD security and recovery market. The unique level of technical differentiation in its product means that the moat the company has established will be difficult to cross, and its ability to provide such a robust recovery solution is unparalleled in the market. But perhaps most notably, as soon as we started diligence on Semperis, we were incredibly impressed by the company’s growth. Semperis is the fastest-growing cybersecurity company in America on the Financial Times 2022 ranking. We see this growth as compelling evidence that the team has hit on a real problem that customers are scrambling to solve and is delivering a product with efficacy and usability that delight these customers every day.
Of course, the team matters most, and in this case, there’s no exception. We’re extremely impressed with the executive team led by CEO Mickey Bresman, who co-founded Semperis along with Guy Teverovsky and Matan Liberman. With his technical background in the Navy and after spending many years on the front lines helping organizations thwart and respond to cyberattacks, Mickey is a leader who understands firsthand the challenges that security programs face in the field. Mickey has gathered a seasoned management team around him, supported by advisors from an elite group of strategic investors with an exceptional record of scaling high-growth cybersecurity companies.
We’re thrilled to be working on this opportunity again with our Joint Investment Alliance partners KKR. Together, we have found new ways to add value to our portfolio companies through our unique understanding of the cyber landscape and the network we have built within it. We have great faith in the vision that Mickey has for Semperis, the impact of the Semperis product, and the quality of the Semperis team. We’re thrilled to help the Semperis team in their next stage of growth and enable their mission to be a force for good by providing the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise identity protection.
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