Kenna Security raises $48M to accelerate its international expansion and drive further innovation

Kenna Security, the enterprise leader in risk-based vulnerability management, announced a $48 million series D funding round that adds Sorenson Capital and Citi Ventures as new investors.

Ken Elefant, Managing Director of Sorenson Capital will join Kenna Security’s board of directors. The investment brings Kenna’s total raised to $98 million.

“This round of funding demonstrates significant confidence in Kenna’s continued growth potential as the global market for risk-based vulnerability management expands,” said Karim Toubba, CEO of Kenna Security.

“Kenna will continue to accelerate its international expansion and drive further innovation that helps companies better manage their overwhelming cybersecurity challenges through data science.”

Kenna’s existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Costanoa Ventures, Hyde Park Angels, and OurCrowd, joined the funding round.

“Kenna Security has led risk-based vulnerability management and is the first company to bring truly predictive and proactive capabilities to this market,” said Elefant. “We’ve been impressed with their extensive client portfolio and pioneering technology. Our investment will help position the company for the next stage of its global growth.”

The pressure to digitally transform businesses, coupled with a tech stack of ever increasing complexity have created such a deluge of data that it is simply impossible for any organization to ensure 100% coverage of its attack surface. Yet research shows that only 5% of vulnerabilities in an enterprise have exploits developed against them.

It’s clear that effective security depends on quickly determining which vulnerabilities warrant action and which of those have highest priority, but prioritization remains one of the biggest challenges in vulnerability management.

Kenna Security has solved this challenge using data science and machine learning to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk and to reduce the average time to patch the riskiest vulnerabilities by more than 40 days compared to other strategies.

Kenna has grown revenue by more than 1000 percent over three years. It introduced groundbreaking technology, such as the industry’s first vulnerability exploit prediction and peer benchmarking capabilities, and was granted a patent for truly predictive vulnerability management. Other milestones include:

• The integration of Kenna Security’s vulnerability risk intelligence into VMware’s AppDefense (part of the VMware vSphere Platinum offering). AppDefense is a data center security product that protects applications running in virtualized environments
• The appointment of three executives to lead efforts for a new era of growth, scale Kenna’s global expansion and align the company with customer goals
• Ranking number 70 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500; in 2018, marking Kenna as one of the 500 fastest growing companies in North America. Kenna also ranked in the top 500 of all companies in this year’s Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies from Inc. Magazine
• Continued thought leadership and groundbreaking research into the security practices at major companies, which has shown that most companies can only patch one out of every ten vulnerabilities and validates Kenna’s risk-based approach to vulnerability management