Gone Phishing: Agari Raises $22 Million for Email Security Platform

Email security provider Agari announced that it has raised $22 million in Series D funding, bringing its total funding to $44.7 million. Norwest Venture Partners led the funding round, while existing investors Alloy Ventures, ScaleVP, First Round Capital, and Greylock Partners all participated.

The funding will support development and deployment of the Agari Email Trust Platform, according to the company. The cloud-based platform stops phishing by identifying the true sender of emails. The company has a channel partner program, along with affiliate partners and data partners.

Phishing can cause a lot of damage, and the attacks have become much more sophisticated, which makes a platform like Agari’s an easy sell for partners. A report by ComputerWorld last week said that today’s “phishing scams are not only slick and professional-looking, but also well thought out and tailored to their audience” and “are much harder for the average user to immediately recognize as malicious.”

“In order to develop our cyber security investment thesis, we regularly interview CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) to understand their top security concerns. We consistently heard from these customers that major breaches were being attributed to targeted phishing attacks,” Rama Sekhar, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “When we searched for an investment opportunity in today’s crowded security market that had a proven technology to meet this challenge, along with a track record of reliability, continued innovation, and high customer satisfaction, Agari stood alone.”

READ MORE: 4 Things You Should Know About Phishing

Based in Silicon Valley, Agari was founded by employees of Cisco’s IronPort solutions. Its clients include financial institutions, social media networks, and government agencies. According to Agari, its platform protects more than 85 percent of consumer mailboxes in the US and analyzes more than 10 billion messages per day.

“Over the past several years, the cybersecurity market has grown exponentially – with new companies and products being launched every few months. Yet with all this industry focus, email attacks are continuing unabated, with growing impact,” said Patrick Peterson, founder and CEO of Agari. “Enterprises are clamoring for solutions to stop targeted email attacks to protect their corporate assets, as well as avoid the humiliating publicity that comes with these attacks. We are in a unique position: the Agari Email Trust Platform is the only proven solution to prevent these previously ‘unstoppable’ email attacks. This funding will allow us to expand our development and deployment activities, enabling both companies and consumers to once again ‘trust’ in their email.”