January 25, 2016

A cyber unicorn (a private company valued at $1 billion or more) announced in Israel this week and two companies reeling in big bucks in the IoT sphere.

ForeScout Technologies, the US-Israeli pioneer in agentless cybersecurity, has announced $76 million in additional financing to push its value to $1 billion. The additional capital will be used to expand global field operations, build a world-class support organization and increase R&D efforts to accelerate leadership in the underserved Internet of Things (IoT) security space, according to a company statement.

ForeScout is headquartered in California and has a development center in Tel Aviv. The company – which boasts award-winning technology that provides the unique ability to see and control the rapidly growing population of unsecured and dark devices — was founded in 2000 by Chairman Prof. Hezy Yeshurun from Tel Aviv’s Faculty of Computer Science, CTO Oded Comay, and senior manager Doron Shikmoni.

“It took 25 years for the world to get to five billion connected devices, but with the explosion of the IoT we’ll see around 30 billion by 2020—an entirely new approach to security is required,” said Michael DeCesare, ForeScout CEO & President. “Device proliferation and IoT deployments are easy entrances for cyber criminals if not detected and protected. With agentless visibility, intuitive automated controls and a commitment to integrating with leading security and IT management solutions, ForeScout is well-positioned to own the burgeoning IoT security market.”

In related news, mPrest, a global provider of mission-critical monitoring and control software for the Internet of Things (IoT), has announced a $20 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by GE Ventures, the venture arm of GE, and OurCrowd, one of the world’s leading equity crowdfunding platforms.

mPrest will use the investment to expand its international presence in the industrial and commercial markets and rapidly scale to meet the soaring needs of the IoT world.

“mPrest is an exciting company with significant revenues, a real track record and a very promising future,” said Jon Medved, OurCrowd CEO. “Just as its Iron Dome technology has played an invaluable role in protecting millions of citizens, we are confident that mPrest’s real-time platform will deliver enormous value to its large industrial customers for years to come.”

And Israeli startup TravelersBox, which offers a solution allowing travelers in airports to convert leftover foreign currency into usable digital currency, has announced a successful Series A funding round to the tune of $10 million. The company has raised $15.5 million to date.

“There are more than three billion international travelers every year, and our mission is to provide an easy way for those travelers to regain the lost value of their unused foreign currency,” Tomer Zussman, founder and CEO of TravelersBox said in a statement.

TravelersBox was founded in 2012. It has its headquarters in Gibraltar and an R&D center in Kadima.

Illustration of unicorn by Shutterstock.com

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