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PhishMe acquired by private equity troupe, rebrands as Cofense

The private equity consortium has valued PhishMe at $400 million.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer
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PhishMe has been acquired by a private equity consortium in a deal which valued the firm at $400 million.

On Monday, the company said that as part of the acquisition, PhishMe will now be known as Cofense.

Founded in 2011, PhishMe has secured a total of $58 million through three funding rounds led by Paladin Capital and Aldrich Capital.

PhishMe offers training and educational courses on phishing in order to help the enterprise and its employees recognize fraudulent emails and malicious activity.

In 2015, the company acquired phishing intelligence firm Malcovery Security for an undisclosed amount.

Cofense says that now the firm is backed by multiple equity firms, it will be possible to launch a number of growth initiatives. The acquisition is not expected to impact current services.

See also: Phishing schemes net hackers millions of dollars from Fortune 500

"PhishMe was founded to challenge the cliché -- human is the weakest link," said Rohyt Belani, CEO and Co-Founder of the newly-named Cofense. "Our 1700+ enterprise and mid-market customers affirm that not only can their employees be conditioned to be less susceptible to cyberattacks, but, in fact, they can be turned into sensors of such attacks that provide very timely intelligence."

The firm's phishing reporting software is now present on over 10 million enterprise workstations. Cofense works with almost half of Fortune 500 companies in over 50 countries.

According to the training company's 2017 Enterprise Phishing Resiliency and Defense Report, phishing attempts grew by 65 percent in the past year and the average successful attack can cost a mid-sized company up to $1.6 million.

Business Email Compromise (BEC), which can occur due to successful phishing, cost US businesses alone over $5 billion from 2013 to 2016, according to the FBI.

In related news, a recent campaign uncovered by IBM X-Force found that cybercriminals have stolen millions of dollars from Fortune 500 companies due to successful phishing and BEC scams.

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