Perygee raises $4.75 million to secure most vulnerable IoT and OT devices
Perygee has closed a $4.75 million seed investment led by Ballistic Ventures. The round also includes investment from cybersecurity angels Ray Rothrock, John Donovan, Ohad Finkelstein, Corey Thomas, and Bryson Bort, as well as BBG Ventures, which backs early-stage startups with female founders. To date, Perygee has raised $6.35 million in funding.
Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) devices are critical aspects of the supply chain, from manufacturing plants to utilities to hospitals – and 10 million new devices are connecting to networks daily.
Any operational downtime or an attack on this infrastructure can have costly, damaging ripple effects on populations. However, mid-market enterprises within these supply chains often struggle with implementing optimal security for these devices, when existing tools are expensive and require additional resources to maintain. Perygee solves for this gap, serving the market in a holistic – and affordable – way.
“Perygee is well-positioned to become the leading cybersecurity platform for the combined IoT/OT world. The technology is impressive, customers are raving, and the platform is equally as accessible for a mature security team – for example, in a Fortune 500 manufacturer – as it is for a single IT professional in a small oil and gas corporation,” said Barmak Meftah, Co-founder and General Partner of Ballistic Ventures.
“With Mollie’s incredible background, from her time at the NSA to earning two Harvard master’s degrees at once, she has the proven track record to successfully drive the company forward, and my partners and I are eager to help Perygee carry out their mission.”, Meftah continued.
The Perygee platform
Existing tools in the IoT/OT security market provide visibility, but they are not without limitations. Many can be difficult to deploy and manage. Others are primarily alerting tools with little to no action or they’re aggregators with rigid systems that can’t easily accommodate custom data or insights.
Perygee is the platform that can bring together existing and unlock new IoT/OT data to automate the right security actions in the fastest time on the market – for all organizations.
“Effectively managing several OT systems requires an intelligent solution to handle the complex data challenges,” said Andrew Schaefer, Vice President and CTO of EnVen Energy Corp.
“With Perygee, we can quickly provide structure to our data, easily parse and share relevant information with different stakeholders, and automate the maintenance of our data to maintain our security posture over time.”, Schaefer continued.
“There are always challenges in IoT or medical device inventories. These physical inventories go out of date the minute someone walks out of the building after assessing them and the current automated tools in place do not have the detection or correct identification rate we need. In addition, they may lack the ability to connect to hospital operations, including determining if devices are being utilized and whether we have the right balance of devices across our hospital system,” said Bryan McDowell, Chief Security Officer of University Hospitals.
“What’s different about Perygee is their modern approach, expertise on security and operations of IoT, and flexibility in meeting our needs as we further progress our program.”, McDowell added.
Perygee’s leadership
“In 2021, female founders secured just 2% of all U.S. venture capital.2 Yet, as a first-time CEO, Mollie has gone out and raised funding in two of the most difficult recent market climates, now and during the early days of the pandemic,” said Susan Lyne, Managing Partner of BBG Ventures.
“But our investment in Perygee is not just part of our commitment to funding a more diverse set of founders; it’s also because, thanks to Mollie’s impressive background and sound leadership, Perygee is solving a critical issue of our time.”, Lyne continued.
Mollie Breen, Co-founder and CEO of Perygee, began working on the idea for the company based on work she did at the National Security Agency – in an internal incubator, on the NSA’s offensive team and in an operations office – where she saw first-hand the IoT/OT vulnerabilities that can now be solved with Perygee.
“In just a few short years, we’ve launched a product that we know no other vendor on the market can offer to tackle today’s IoT/OT security challenges, and we’ve gained notable customer traction along the way,” said Breen.
Breen continued: “I’m humbled by the team and technology we’ve put together and grateful to have some of the industry’s most well-known investors and advisors onboard to support us as we grow.”
As part of Perygee’s latest investment, Ballistic’s Meftah will join the Perygee Board of Directors. Angel investor John Donovan, CEO of Qudit Investments and former CEO of AT&T Communications, will join as a board advisor to Perygee.
Perygee today released a new self-service onboarding experience for any IoT/OT stakeholder to immediately get started using a free tier of the platform. This service allows anyone to be empowered with the tools to customize and manage their IoT/OT data, dashboards, and workflows without costly investment or ongoing overhead.