Cybersecurity company Expel announces $20 million in series B funding

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Led by Scale Venture Partners, investment will accelerate growth of transparent managed security provider

Press releases · Cole Finch

Herndon, Va. – April 10  – Expel, the company that replaces what organizations spend on managed security service providers (MSSPs), announced it has secured $20 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm investing in the future of work. Ariel Tseitlin, a partner at Scale Venture Partners, will join Expel’s board of directors. Scale joins Expel’s existing investors: Battery Ventures, Greycroft, Lightbank, NEA, Paladin Capital Group and Profile Capital Management – all of whom also participated. Including this round, Expel has secured a total of $27.5 million in funding to date.

“Security is now a board-level concern. But even when companies make responsible and sustained investments, security teams are stretched by too many products delivering reams of alerts without enough security talent to prioritize them,” said Ariel Tseitlin, partner at Scale Venture Partners. “Expel amplifies existing security investments through clear, transparent managed security that helps chief information security officers (CISOs) effectively manage risk.”

Expel replaces alerts with answers using a new approach called transparent managed security. Expel analysts use customers’ existing security products to monitor their environment 24×7 and investigate suspicious activity. When Expel spots an attack the customer gets answers, written in plain english, that explain exactly what to do, including how to fix the root cause of problems that happen over and over again. Customers can watch investigations as they’re unfolding and take action immediately – all within a shared interface. A complete overview of Expel’s offering is available at: https://expel.com/services/.

“Managed security service providers (MSSPs) have failed to deliver on the value they promised. They’ve beaten their customers into submission and taught them to expect less,” said Dave Merkel, co-founder and chief executive officer at Expel. “They’re alert factories that take 1,000 alerts from customers’ devices, repackage them into 100 alerts and promptly toss them back over the fence to the customer. It’s 2018. We don’t think grown security professionals should still be chasing alerts. Expel helps CISOs get out of that rut so they can focus on making decisions and managing risk.”

A recent report by Forrester Research, “The Market For Managed Detection And Response Booms in 2017,” highlights the current level of dissatisfaction companies have with their existing managed security providers:

“MSSPs failed to adapt services to actual customer needs. While five to 10 years ago clients were struggling to solve visibility and monitoring problems, security leaders in 2017 need investigations, not notifications. Sending notification that an alert occurred is far less valuable than remediating the issue that caused the alert in the first place.1”

“Over the last decade, cloud computing and software-as-a-service models have changed the role of the CIO. IT teams aren’t racking servers and swapping hard drives like they used to,” said Abhi Arunachalam, vice president at Battery Ventures. “Instead, teams are focused on driving revenue and improving customer satisfaction. We’re seeing CISOs undergo a similar transition, and believe Expel’s fresh approach to this problem will have the same transformative effect on CISOs investment in security products.”

“We are delighted to welcome Scale to the Expel team to join a strong syndicate of top investors,” said Mourad Yesayan, principal at Paladin Capital Group and Expel board member. “We were early believers in Expel and are excited by the exceptional team they’ve brought together and their strong initial traction against this huge market opportunity.”

Expel will use the Series B proceeds to accelerate their product development and go-to-market activities.

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Editor’s note –The following buzzwords were consciously eliminated from this press release in no particular order: market-leading, next-generation, military grade intelligence, artificial intelligence, leveraging, powerful, platform, scalable, robust, changing threat landscape, end-to-end, actionable, AI, real-time, machine learning, state-of-the-art, best-of-breed, elite, continuous and purpose-built.

About Expel

Expel (@expel_io) provides transparent managed security. It’s the antidote for companies trapped in failed relationships with their managed security service provider (MSSP) and those looking to avoid the frustration of working with one in the first place.

Transparency is the unique bit. You get 24×7 access to our security analysts so you can watch investigations as they’re unfolding and take action immediately — all within a shared interface. Our analysts monitor your environment and investigate suspicious activity using the security products you already own. When we find a problem, we tell you exactly what to do about it including how to fix the root cause of problems that happen over and over. To learn more, check us out at https://expel.com/.

About Scale Venture Partners

Scale Venture Partners (@scalevp) invests in software companies that are transforming the future of work. Investments include: Box (BOX), Chef, Cloudhealth, DataStax, Demandbase, DocuSign, ExactTarget (ET), HubSpot (HUBS), JFrog, Lever, and WalkMe. ScaleVP partners with entrepreneurs to support accelerated growth from the first customer to market leadership. Founded in 2000, ScaleVP has over $1 billion under management and is located in Silicon Valley. For more information visit www.scalevp.com.

1 “The Market For Managed Detection And Response Booms in 2017″. Forrester Research Inc., July 21 2017. By Jeff Pollard with Stephanie Balaouras, Joseph Blankenship, Trevor Lyness and Christine Turley.

Media inquiries:

Michael Evans
Expel
202.341.2428
michael.evans@expel.io

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