Elevate Security Raises $8 Million from Defy, Costanoa to Solve the Human Element of Cybersecurity

The Funding Is Enabling the Inclusive Security Startup to Rapidly Expand Its Footprint Through Key Hires and General Availability of the Elevate Platform, Which Delivers Security Behavior Insights and Change.

Elevate Security announced that it has raised $8 million Series A to develop the first fully integrated Security Behavior Platform, to change employees’ habits while giving Security teams unprecedented visibility into security readiness. Defy Partners led the financing, with existing investor, Costanoa Ventures, participating. Elevate has raised $10M to date and will be using this new capital to expand the team, open a new engineering hub in Montreal, and accelerate go-to-market for its platform.

$8M series A announced for @hello_Elevate from @defyvc and @costanoavc #funding #c

According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 93% of all breaches are the result of attacks targeting people — namely, employees. Traditional security awareness training has not reduced this risk, leaving employees uncomfortably numb, concerned but un-empowered. Leveraging the latest advances in behavioral and data science, Elevate is providing a sorely needed new approach to motivate, enable and reward employees for making good decisions, while providing CISOs and awareness practitioners visibility and insight into employee behavior and risk.

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In order to develop the platform to make people-powered security attainable for all companies, Elevate has hired Jean-François Gailleur as vice president of engineering. Jean-François has held key leadership roles at AppDirect, SAP and RadialPoint, in addition to lecturing at École de technologie supérieure in Montreal. Gailleur is charged with building out Elevate’s engineering team in Montreal.

The funding will also be used in part to accelerate the go-to-market strategy of the Elevate Platform, which measures, motivates and rewards employee security behavior change.

“Sending more content to our employees just wasn’t moving the needle on risk prevention,” said Elevate customer, James Hong, Sr. Manager, Security Engagement, Autodesk. “Elevate is helping us change the game and take our program beyond awareness to readiness by giving us and our employees visibility and insight to know how we are doing along our journey to employee-centric risk reduction.”

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“The vast majority of hacking breaches have to do with taking advantage of people,” said Trae Vassallo, co-founder and managing director from Defy. “Elevate founders, Robert and Masha have combined their knowledge and expertise in cybersecurity to help transform employees from potential weaknesses into security assets.”

“We’re really proud to be building an inclusive security company, and partnering with Defy and Costanoa is enabling us to do that in a powerful way,” said Masha Sedova, co-founder and chief product officer. “Our company is 50% female, engineering included, and we have an all-women outside board. The culture we’re building internally is just as exciting as what we’re building externally for our great customers.”

As part of this financing, Trae Vassallo and Martina Lauchengco have joined the board.

Robert Fly, co-founder and chief executive officer, said, “For too long, companies have treated their employees like the weakest link. We knew we could help customers empower their employees to be security superheroes against threats. I’m excited to build a team to make this a reality for more and more companies.”

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