How Claroty is Making the Most Critical Networks in the World Safer
Claroty’s mission is to secure the industrial control networks that run our online world. Its comprehensive platform provides visibility, cyber threat detection, secure remote access and risk assessments to defend against cyber attacks.
We recently participated in Claroty’s $60 million Series B funding round. With more than 350% customer growth since last year, the company is growing fast, already supporting large-scale customers across the electric utilities, oil and gas, chemical, water, manufacturing, food and beverage, mining and real estate sectors.
We had a chance to sit down with Claroty CEO and co-founder, Amir Zilberstein.
What problem were you trying to solve when you founded Claroty?
Our goal has always been to protect the most critical networks in the world from cyber attacks. Companies spent the past decade improving cybersecurity for business networks, but the industrial control system networks that run our modern society remain largely unprotected. Claroty is solving this critical problem.
What’s Claroty’s vision of the future? How are you different from others trying to achieve the same thing?
Our vision is to ensure operational technology (OT) networks are protected. The first product we created provides deep visibility into OT environments by monitoring critical networks in real-time for threats and vulnerabilities. Having developed the most advanced technology in the marketplace for this task, we soon realized it would require multiple, integrated tools.
So, we went on to develop an integrated suite that includes Secure Remote Access (i.e. to remove a common attack vector into OT networks) and Enterprise Management Console (i.e. to aggregate data from multiple sites and integrate it with Security Operations Center technologies). We also went on to launch our Security Posture Assessment tool, which enables partners to rapidly assess OT environment risks and help their customers address those vulnerabilities.
What made Next47 the right venture partner for your long-term growth ambitions?
Our interest in Next47 went beyond capital. The team understood the specific challenges we faced in industrial markets, and they continue to be very actively engaged, helping us accelerate our go-to-market approach and navigate the massive Siemens organization and industrial customer base.
What’s the toughest hurdle you’ve encountered so far, and how did you overcome it?
Scaling our business — particularly our sales engine — to meet rapidly increasing market demand has been a challenge. Admittedly, this is a pretty good hurdle to have to face, but it requires substantial effort nonetheless! We’ve been fortunate to receive support from our board, investors, industry friends and former colleagues, and we’re continuing to recruit a strong sales and partner team.
How has mentorship and/or networking impacted your founder journey?
We were lucky to launch from Team8, Israel’s leading cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform. That experience provided our team access to executives across the industry and connections to sister companies with significant market, strategic planning and operational experience.
Our investors like Next47 and Claroty Chairman Dave DeWalt continue to support me by helping me really understand our market, optimize our partner dynamics and develop a strategy to deliver rapid but sustainable growth.
What do you know now that you wish you knew a year ago?
With all the documents you need to sign as a CEO, I sure wish I’d known earlier that I could use DocuSign on my laptop AND phone!
Any other interesting facts about your company, the market and/or your customers?
Interestingly, we’ve established a solid customer base in the food and beverage industry. Of course, we also work within oil and gas, electric utilities, manufacturing, chemicals and pharma, but there’s been surprisingly large demand from soda, beer, wine and dairy companies.
