SPHERE Technology Solutions, a Newark-based firm that specializes in cybersecurity issues, announced Wednesday a $31 million Series B investment led by Edison Partners, a Princeton-based leading growth equity firm, with participation from existing investor Forgepoint Capital.
As part of the transaction, Edison General Partner Lenard Marcus will join SPHERE’s board of directors.
As cyberattacks escalate in number and severity, identity hygiene has become foundational to enterprise security, digital transformation and mandatory compliance. The increasing need to ensure identities have access to only the required resources has been in direct response to the rise in ransomware attacks and bad actors who take advantage of wide open and mismanaged access.
SPHERE officials feel they immediately shrink the attack surface of these threats through an automated platform that provides visibility and remediation of identity hygiene risks along with tech-enabled managed services, delivering expertise to accelerate these crucial programs.
SPHERE’s current customers are some of the largest and most highly regulated organizations globally, ranging from financial institutions to health care providers and more. With this investment, SPHERE will expand its Software-as-a-Service offering, channel ecosystem and alliances, and sales and marketing to accelerate growth.
“As a company founded and operated by a team of security practitioners, we developed a mission-critical solution well before the market even deemed it mission-critical,” SPHERE founder and CEO Rita Gurevich said.
“We’ve experienced the problems that our customers encounter firsthand, and understand the time, dedication and resources it takes to solve the complex issues they face every day. We’re thrilled to have the support of Edison Partners and Forgepoint Capital for our next chapter of growth.”
For over 13 years, SPHERE has enabled information technology and security teams to adopt a Zero Trust model by finding and fixing any type of identity access issue across any resource — in a fraction of the time these complex capabilities would take manually.
About SPHERE
SPHERE Technology Solutions is an award-winning, woman-owned cybersecurity business focusing on improving security and enhancing compliance. SPHERE’s identity hygiene solution puts the controls in place to secure an enterprise’s most sensitive data, create the right governance processes for systems and assets and ensure organizations are compliant with the regulations surrounding their respective industries.
About Edison Partners
Edison Partners is a leading growth equity firm providing the financial and intellectual capital that CEOs and their executive teams need to grow and scale their companies.
The firm’s team brings more than 275 years of combined investing, operating and sector experience to each investment, accessible via the Edison Edge value creation platform, which is tailored to each business’ strategy, stage and operating needs. Edison targets high-growth financial technology, health care information technology and vertical Software-as-a-Service and marketplace companies located outside Silicon Valley with $10 million to $30 million in revenue.
Investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases. Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Edison Partners manages $1.6 billion in assets.
The platform SPHEREboard provides an end-to-end workflow for end-user and privileged account controls, across cloud and on-premises systems and infrastructure, remediates open, excessive and inappropriate access, and provides an evergreen path for sustainability.
Marcus said Edison is impressed by SPHERE.
“Identity management and, more broadly, information security, starts with the ability to ensure that the only parties with access to sensitive or operational data are those identified by management,” he said.
“SPHERE’s platform enables enterprises to improve their identity hygiene and maintain compliance. Its managed services offerings enable it to service the mid-market and large enterprises, where the problem is pervasive. Edison Partners is also proud to support female trailblazers like Rita Gurevich, who are closing the gender diversity gap in a historically male-dominated industry.”
SPHERE continues to build significant traction and earn industry accolades that recognize the company’s growth, leadership and commitment to diversity, a source of passion for Gurevich ever since she began building the company from the ground up.
SPHERE was honored as a Gold Winner in the 2022 Globee Cyber Security Excellence Awards, named a finalist in the annual SINET 16 Awards, and selected by the Timmy Awards for Best Tech Workplace for Diversity in New York.
A proven leader and innovator in cybersecurity, Gurevich was named by SC Magazine as a top “Women to Watch” in 2022. She was also selected as the only female finalist for the SC Awards “Security Executive of the Year.”
“Our focus is to invest in the most innovative cybersecurity companies, and SPHERE’s combination of automation and expertise is unmatched in the industry,” Forgepoint Capital Managing Director Don Dixon said.
“Major corporations including many of the world’s leading financial institutions rely on SPHERE for its ability to effectively address two critical use cases — zero trust initiatives and regulatory requirements for identity entitlements. We’re excited to continue our partnership and to welcome Lenard and Edison to the board of directors.”
