Boston-based Cybereason Inc. can now count itself among the best-funded startups in the cybersecurity market thanks to a newly closed $200 million round that was announced today. 

SoftBank Group Corp. and affiliates provided the entirety of the new capital. The Japanese carrier has been a Cybereason investor for four years, since before it launched the SoftBank Vision Fund that would turn it into a leading name in the venture capital world.

Cybereason’s flagship product is an endpoint protection platform that both detects malware and provides tools for investigating data breaches. The malware neutralization is carried out by a built-in antivirus, which finds threats by looking for suspicious activity patterns. If, say, a file on an employee laptop suddenly tries to encrypt other documents kept on the machine, Cybereason can deduce that it’s ransomware and halt the encryption attempt. 

The startup’s pitch to network protection teams is that its software can save them a considerable amount of work. Cybereason claims that the platform allows one security analyst to monitor 150,000 endpoints, compared with the typical ratio of one analyst per 20,000.

Overall, Cybereason protects more than 6 million endpoints worldwide. The startup has customers in major vertical markets such as healthcare, banking, defense and technology. 

Besides boosting Cybereason’s business growth, the new $200 million from SoftBank should also allow the startup to expand its hacker monitoring operation. Cybereason has a team of analysts that regularly publishes research about cyberattacks and new forms of malware. One of the startup’s most recent discoveries is Sodinokibi, a particularly evasive ransomware strain that actively hides from antivirus engines.

Cybereason has raised a total of $389 million in funding to date and is now reportedly valued at $900 million. The startup’s others backers besides SoftBank are CRV, Lockheed Martin Corp. and  Spark Capital.

Technology investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into the security market in a bid to seize upon the segment’s rapid growth. Last year, cybersecurity startups attracted an estimated $5.3 billion in funding, up 20% compared with 2017 and double the investment level recorded for 2016. 

Photo: Cybereason