Clearwater cybersecurity firm closes deal, passes 2,000 employees

KnowBe4, a cybersecurity company specializing in security training for IT teams and an anti-phishing platform, officially closed on their acquisition of Egress, a cloud email security firm. 

The acquisition was announced earlier this spring and includes full integration of approximately 300 employees, putting KnowBe4 staff at just over 2,100 people.

“This acquisition reinforces our ability to fortify global organizations against the ever-increasing amount of human-targeted threats,” says KnowBe4 CEO Stu Sjouwerman in a released statement. “Today marks an important milestone in the evolution of cybersecurity and the next generation of KnowBe4’s human risk management capabilities.”

KnowBe4 was founded by CEO Stu Sjouwerman in 2010 and sold to Vista Equity Partners out of Texas in 2022 for $4.6 billion. Before going private, the company reported $246.3 million in revenue in 2021. Their platform is used by 52 million users across 65,000 organizations according to the website.

Egress was founded in London in 2007 by CEO Tony Pepper, COO Neil Larkins and CSO John Goodyear. In 2018 it raised $40m from FTV Capital and Albion VC in Series C funding.

“KnowBe4 and Egress have a shared vision of delivering tailored and relevant security to each employee,” Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress notes in a previous statement, “One of the biggest challenges organizations face is accurately identifying who the next source of compromise is – and why. By combining intelligence and analytics from integrated applications, companies can gain valuable insights across their entire cyber ecosystem, allowing them to focus on the risks that matter most.”