IoT cybersecurity firm raises $6.5m in funding round

IoT cybersecurity company Sternum, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding.

The round, led by Square Peg, was joined by existing investor and global business leader Merle Hinrich, European venture capital firm btov, and private investors including Boston-based entrepreneur Eyal Shavit and founder & CEO of CyberArk, Udi Mokady.

Sternum will use the funding to expand its R&D team and bolster its go-to-market strategy as the company develops its cybersecurity and monitoring solutions. The new round brings Sternum’s total funding raised to $10 million since being founded in 2018.

40 billion IoT devices are predicted to be in use by 2025, and until now, there has not been a scalable, endpoint cybersecurity solution that can be installed on individual devices. Instead, manufacturers have heavily relied on vulnerability patching or network security – which can be insufficient, as devices can lack adequate security protection, and manufacturers are unable to capture valuable data points from devices in operation. Device data can provide key insights for optimising performance, supporting future developments, and profiling and mitigating third-party behaviour and risk. 

Sternum’s  solutions are injected into a device’s binary code and can be integrated into IoT devices with no configurations or changes to existing code required. 

Natali Tshuva, CEO and co-founder of Sternum, said: “I’m excited to say that we are the only company offering both an embedded, agentless, and holistic security solution for all IoT devices, as well as the ability to monitor them through an intelligent cloud platform, no matter the operating system or resources available, thus creating the first on-device technology acceptable by all IoT devices. This round, closed during a global pandemic, is a vote of confidence in our dual vision for IoT cybersecurity and on-device intelligence, our technology, and most importantly, our team. With these new funds, we will continue actively recruiting researchers and engineers to grow our industry-leading R&D team in our mission to secure all IoT devices and obtain insights that will vastly improve our connected world.”

Philippe Schwartz, partner at Square Peg, said: “We are impressed with Sternum’s innovative products and diverse team, whose technologies will power our connected future with uncompromising security protection and rich, data-driven insights. We look forward to supporting the Sternum team as they continue to help their customers protect and secure their business-critical IoT devices.”

Sternum has partnered with a medical device manufacturer, to provide endpoint security for life saving IoT devices.