Cybersecurity in a Post-COVID World

July 12, 2021

The Daily Stack is a daily private market insights newsletter by PrivCo, a private company intelligence platform. Read our previous insights.
Have an interesting topic you want us to include, let us know!

Major crises have a way of laying bare the collective vulnerabilities of a city, nation, community, or world. The 9/11 and 2008 financial crises both directed our attention to the lack of intelligence, regulation, and oversight that, in hindsight, could potentially have helped avoid the devastating consequences. COVID-19 will be no exception. The pandemic cast doubt upon our nation’s ability to rapidly curb the spread of a contagious virus as well as shed more light on racial and socioeconomic inequality.

As the pandemic created an unprecedented shift to a reliance on technology and with it, ample opportunity for security threats against businesses, schools, and the government, the cybersecurity industry rapidly climbed in investor interest in 2020. The interest is still spiking upwards into 2021. According to data from Crunchbase, the first half of 2021 has already exceeded the 2020 record of $7.8BN in cybersecurity-related funding, hitting $9BN at the end of the 2nd quarter.

Fundings

The funding is trending towards large investments in early-stage companies, such as Vanta’s $50MM Round A in May, to build upon the company’s platform for centralizing security. The company has nearly doubled its employees this year.

One of the larger investments this year was in Paris-based crypto-security startup, Ledger Wallet, with $380MM pouring into the company in May. Palo Alto-based Salt Security received a $70MM round C led by Advent International for API security measures. Eden Prairie, Minnesota boasts the $4BN valued cloud security company Arctic Wolf Networks. Arctic's user-behavior monitoring software has nearly tripled the company's revenues and employees since before the pandemic.

The Safe Bet?

Security remains a top priority for both small and large companies as more time and assets are spent online and as attackers continue to become more sophisticated. While valuations and investments are through the roof, there is no such thing as a safe bet. Investment experts warn against betting on the never-ending stream of new companies promising to fulfill increasingly niche categories of security.