Rohyt Belani, CEO & Co-founder, Cofense
So far, it’s been a very exciting 2018 here at Cofense, with our recent acquisition and announcement of our new name and brand. We continued performing well as a company and launching numerous new features across our products.
Our motto at Cofense is: Innovate. Execute. Grow. We have never been a company that follows, but rather one that disrupts by launching products that are first to market. And we continue to maintain that competitive edge.
Over the years, we’ve seen upstarts and followers copy our business model and to them I say – “Thank You!” Imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery.
I know a lot of you (especially our valued customers) are wondering what to expect as Cofense now has new private equity investors and announced our new name. Please let me share my perspective:
First, on the private equity piece…
We raised our first round of funding in July 2012. Our early investors supported us through the years as we grew from a company with $2MM in annual sales to $75MM. Having seen our start-up grow aggressively during that time, our investors thought it was a good time to realize the benefits of their early support; a prudent and savvy business move IMHO.
However, the management team (me included) were not ready to sell PhishMe to a larger security company as we want to continue to innovate, execute, and grow! We were very fortunate to find astute investors that recognized the vision, talent and demonstrated success. We structured a transaction to help address our former investors’ needs, reward early employees for their hard work over the years, and most importantly provide the company with financial backing to continue building an enduring organization.
As customers and partners, you should expect only positive change, including the ability to make longer term investments; bring more innovative offerings to market sooner; deliver new features even faster; and expand our white-glove service teams to cater to your needs even better than before.
Now, for the name change and rebrand.
We love the PhishMe name. It served us well when we sold one product – PhishMe Simulator. As we expanded our product portfolio with Reporter, Triage, Intelligence, and Brand Intelligence, added managed services offerings, and expanded our footprint globally, a name limited to phishing simulations no longer represented our focus. It was time to think bigger.
Our customers’ ROI is directly related to stopping real attacks rapidly using employee-generated reports analyzed by the SOC. We are truly in the business of promoting COllaborative deFENSE – COFENSE – not just inside an organization, but across our many customers’ organizations as well. As (unattributable) intelligence gets shared across the ecosystem of Triage deployments, all customers can benefit from each other’s work against the common enemy – cybercriminals and/or nation-sponsored actors. This shared intelligence – our collective defense – is the Cofense solution that gives our customers the competitive advantage they need to stay ahead of attackers.
So, while we’ve changed the company name, we’ve retained PhishMe as the name of our simulation offering. More importantly, you can rest assured that we are the same team, only better. Now we have more financial power to wield in the fight against attacks and breaches.
If you want to learn more about our vision and the new state of collective defense, contact us or schedule a 1:1 demo to see why we continue to lead the charge.
We look forward to serving you in our common mission of making life a living hell for cybercriminals and nation-sponsored attackers.
