PRINCETON, N.J. -Edison Partners, a leading growth equity investment firm, today announced a USD $20 million investment in Field Effect, an Ottawa-based global cyber security company specializing in intelligence-grade protection for small and medium organizations. Edison Partners leads the $30 million round, joined by other strategic investors, who have contributed a combined $10 million.
Field Effect will use the funds to accelerate its sales and marketing efforts with a focus on channel and brand. Additionally, the funds will support product and service evolution, financial scaling, and further development of commercial operations, including e-commerce.
Field Effect was founded with the purpose of addressing the cyber security needs of the vastly underserved small and medium enterprise (SME) market. Most security tools were built with the Fortune 1000 or large enterprise in mind, requiring both huge budgets and deep security expertise to manage, far from reality for SMEs. This has left SMEs either having to operate without proper protection, struggling to manage overly complex tools, or spending beyond their means for cyber security. For these reasons, the SME market for cyber security is highly fragmented, with no vendor holding more than 30% market share.
Field Effect’s flagship product, Covalence, combines advanced analytics, machine learning, and the expertise of security analysts skilled in both offensive and defensive tactics to deliver a holistic solution purpose-built for SMEs. Covalence monitors, detects, and actively responds in real-time to threats across the breadth of the modern IT environment, analyzing telemetry from the network, devices, and cloud services. It reduces risk by identifying vulnerabilities before attackers do, allowing SMEs to take a proactive approach to their cyber security. Alerts are delivered via proprietary AROs (actions, recommendations, and observations) framework which presents relevant information in a straightforward manner to be accessible even to those without any cyber security expertise.
Recognizing that knowledge and experience are required to support the human elements of cyber security, Field Effect also offers Cyber Range, a cyber security training platform used to simulate and run realistic threat scenarios and courses for hands-on learning. Cyber Range customers vary in size from SMEs to large corporations, universities, and government agencies.
“Digital assets and infrastructure are at a critical juncture of vulnerability, and Field Effect is positioned for continued momentum with its SME cyber security offerings. We’re thrilled to partner with Field Effect in its efforts to accelerate and expand its market presence,” said Lenard Marcus, general partner of Edison Partners who led the investment and joined the company’s board of directors.
“Field Effect is excited to work with Edison Partners to help scale our sales and marketing efforts and expand into new markets. We look forward to evolving our products and services even further and continuing to delight SMEs both directly, and through our partners, including managed services providers and IT resellers, thereby enhancing our reputation as a holistic and flexible cyber security company,” said Matt Holland, co-founder and CEO, Field Effect.