Contact: Wendy Nather
As long as there are carbon-based life forms in the system, there will be a need for security awareness education. Security Innovation has spent several years enhancing its application-based security training, but now is expanding into general security training products by acquiring Safelight Security. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed, and neither side used an adviser.
The two companies started talking about teaming up in late 2013. Safelight had last raised funding in 2011, garnering just under $1m from angel investors, and it needed more financing to ride the wave of demand for infosec awareness training. From the Security Innovation side, the deal is an opportunity to take out a likeminded competitor, pick up senior security talent (always in short supply), and collect Safelight’s customer base (since the two were rivals, there’s little overlap). While both sides had plenty of training content, Safelight’s was cast more in the mold of awareness marketing campaigns, including ‘themed collateral’ such as posters, YouTube-style short videos, tip sheets and infographics to go along with the computer-based training.
Both Safelight and Security Innovation have been around for a long time, but security training is gaining fresh interest as newcomers like PhishMe, Wombat Security and KnowBe4 join the scene. Security Compass remains a competitor, as does Denim Group, which still produces its ThreadStrong training videos. The combination of Security Innovation and Safelight is probably big enough to take on Cigital, SANS Institute and FishNet Security.
We’ll have a detailed report on this transaction in tomorrow’s 451 Research Market Insight.
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