MANASSAS, Va., July 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RangeForce, the premier provider of on-demand, realistic cloud-based cybersecurity training, today announced a $16 million Series A round led by Energy Impact Partners. Paladin Capital Group continues its longstanding support of RangeForce as part of this round. The Series A also includes existing firm Trind as well as a new investment from Cisco Investments.
With Global Headquarters in Virginia and roots in building the cyber range for NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, RangeForce solves an important problem for global enterprises — how to put a remotely accessible training program in place that can assess, train, and continually upskill cyber professionals. The RangeForce cloud platform enables teams to learn by defending against real attacks in a hands-on, engaging, and competitive environment, a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional cyber ranges. With the RangeForce CyberSkills platform, enterprise defenders can continuously practice how to handle cyberattacks, ensuring that all team members see what a malicious attack vector looks like in a benign environment before experiencing it for the first time.
“We’re thrilled to partner with RangeForce at a time when critical infrastructure is under attack and organizations seek to replace classroom education with cloud-based practical training,” said Nazo Moosa, Managing Partner Europe at Energy Impact Partners. “Worldwide, we see organizations continue to struggle with the shortage of cybersecurity professionals. While investing heavily in cybersecurity tools, they severely underinvest in the training their people need to manage the security stack and harness their skills to detect and stop a cyberattack.”
RangeForce has experienced rapid growth since its launch, with a 2,700 percent year-over-year increase in annual recurring revenues. The company plans to build on its momentum from its headquarters in the Washington, D.C. area. More than 100 organizations are already experiencing the benefits of the RangeForce platform, including some of the world’s largest organizations across financial services, technology, government, retail, telecom, and healthcare. RangeForce’s CyberSkills Platform provides customers with prescriptive, individualized learning paths with hundreds of real-world training modules so that security, DevOps, web application engineers, and industrial control teams can quickly upskill and cross-train team members, provide custom reports to management, and orchestrate incident detection and response across multiple vendor tools. RangeForce has also developed vendor-specific training modules to include Recorded Future, Splunk, VirusTotal, and Carbon Black. These integrations continue to expand as the company creates a full-stack security partner ecosystem.
RangeForce CEO Taavi Must explains, “This round of funding validates our mission to bring highly effective operational cybersecurity training to organizations of all sizes. One of the toughest challenges facing enterprise defenders is that they’ve been expected to use highly complex security tools while their organizations are under attack, without ever learning and practicing how to use them effectively together. With hands-on, simulation-based cybersecurity training, we strengthen enterprise defenders and their teams and make the security solutions they select even more effective.”
“In an ever-expanding stack of cyber security technologies, people are still the most important decision-makers. Yet this human layer of the security stack is the most overburdened, and therefore weakest link. RangeForce turns the weakest link into an enterprise’s strongest asset by upskilling the people managing, configuring, and defending their systems. We are delighted to continue supporting the leader in cloud-based cyber security skills development through their next phase of exponential growth," said Gibb Witham, RangeForce Board Director and Senior Vice President at Paladin Capital Group.
Added Gordon Lawson, RangeForce President and CRO, “Our human-focused platform is a simple solution to a complicated problem: how to make sure the security community — at all levels — are getting the cybersecurity training they need when and where they need it. Our engagement with EIP, Paladin, and Cisco Investments allows us to continue our explosive growth as we gain customers globally and deliver an incredible experience to our stakeholders.”
“The evolving threat landscape continues to highlight one of the greatest challenges facing the global security industry today: the workforce-skills gap,” said Bret Hartman, vice president and CTO of Cisco’s Security Business Group. “Cisco Investments is excited to support RangeForce on their journey to provide on-demand, real-time assessment and training that CISOs can leverage for cybersecurity professionals and SOC teams. RangeForce has a great opportunity to disrupt training, certifications and talent evaluation within the cybersecurity market.”
RangeForce will use the funding to accelerate its go to market efforts, advance product development, expand its ecosystem of training orchestration partners, and focus on global growth.
About Energy Impact Partners
Energy Impact Partners (EIP) is a global investment platform leading the transition to a sustainable energy future. EIP brings together entrepreneurs and the world's most forward-looking energy and industrial companies to advance innovation. With over $1.5 billion in assets under management, EIP invests globally across venture, growth, credit and infrastructure – and has a team of more than 45 professionals based in its offices in New York, San Francisco, Palm Beach, London, Cologne and soon Oslo. For more information on EIP, please visit www.energyimpactpartners.com.
About Paladin Capital Group
Paladin Capital Group was founded in 2001 and has offices in Washington DC, New York, London, Luxembourg, and Silicon Valley. As a multi-stage investor, Paladin focuses on best-of-breed companies with technologies, products, and services that meet the challenging global cyber security and digital infrastructure resilience needs for commercial and government customers. Paladin has over $1 billion in committed capital across multiple funds. Follow the firm on Twitter @Paladincap, and visit their website at www.paladincapgroup.com.
About RangeForce
RangeForce delivers the industry's only integrated cybersecurity simulation and skills analysis platform that combines a virtual cyber range with hands-on advanced cybersecurity training. Cyber and IT professionals from all industry verticals use RangeForce to qualify their new-hires, train up DevOps, IT, and Security Staff, and run CyberSiege simulations to evaluate team skills. Only RangeForce can accurately show users where expertise gaps exist, fill those gaps with highly-effective simulation-based training, and accurately report on the entire process. To learn more about RangeForce, visit www.rangeforce.com.
