TXOne Networks grabs $70 million in Series B funding as global demand soars for protecting enterprise operations
ICS cybersecurity company TXOne Networks announced Thursday that it raised US$70 million in Series B funding. The company looks to take advantage of the global demand for securing enterprise operations is soaring. The capital injection will be used to expand the company’s global presence and defend industry verticals worldwide against complex and volatile cybersecurity threats to industrial control systems (ICS).
Analyzing the new goals that TXOne Networks has set for itself with the Series B funding, Terence Liu, CEO of TXOne Networks, told Industrial Cyber, that the company “continues to offer the best-of-breed solution to ensure digital safety and keeping the OT operation running is still the same goal we would like to achieve. Conquering this journey requires sufficient resources. This funding can help TXOne boost our strategic execution to deal with the rapid change in OT threat,” he adds.
TXOne counts on the ‘OT zero trust’ approach to preserving critical assets’ integrity and productivity in operational technology (OT) environments while providing advanced solutions to address enterprises’ needs to prepare for, avert and respond to ever-changing cybersecurity threats and keep operations running. It caters to the needs of a host of customers, such as large enterprises and international conglomerates, upstream, midstream and downstream supply chains in various sectors, including semiconductor, medical and pharmaceutical, automobile, aerospace, smart manufacturing, food processing, public transportation, and critical electric infrastructure.
The surge in cybersecurity demand contributed to a 107 percent increase year-on-year in TXOne Networks’ revenue in the first half of this year. Furthermore, TXOne Networks’ employment in Europe and the United States increased by 67 percent. The trend will continue with the overall number of staff in Asia, Europe, and the United States expected to double by the end of this year, it adds.
Liu said that the game does not change during a cyberattack, ‘good preparation’ is the best methodology. “This also applies to cybersecurity vendors as well. The diversity of OT/ICS verticals must have the adaptive domain knowledge to fulfill industry needs. This funding can help us address the needs. The investment in vertical in-depth security research and best practices for cybersecurity countermeasures will be one of the priorities for TXOne to mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks with vertical-specific resilience solutions across networks, endpoints, and supply chains,” he added.
“With cyberattacks on the rise, the zero trust era has arrived for OT networks. TXOne Networks’ highly adaptable, OT-native cybersecurity solutions for ICS are proving uniquely up to the task of helping enterprises safeguard operations from known and unknown threats, comply with regulatory requirements and improve core competitiveness,” Liu said in a media statement Thursday.
He added that the unusually large round of Series B funding proves the market’s belief in TXOne Networks. “Having won the trust of our investors in our innovative technologies and products and strong operations team, we are exceeding expectations. We will continue to expand our global market presence, recruit world-class talent and grow the world’s first OT zero trust-based cybersecurity platform,” according to Liu.
“The difficulty to identify security blind spots depends on the coverage of security deployment, but for OT, security is more critical because a single point of failure can lead to a catastrophe, therefore the situation awareness in the OT environment is a solution to that issue,” Liu said. “TXOne’s solutions will build in a machine learning engine to provide a foresight of predicable issues or incidents to avoid catastrophic situations,” he added.
Elaborating on how TXOne will continue to expand its global market presence, recruit world-class talent and grow its OT zero trust-based cybersecurity platform, Liu said that the CPSs (Cyber-Physical System security) scope is a big topic for the CSO (chief security officer), especially in the global enterprise, and needs to have consistent policy enforcement. “TXOne’s future OT zero trust platform can contribute to CPS’s reducing these blind spots that require a significant investment in solution development. The global market expansion is already in place to support our global enterprise customers, investment will continue and cover more regions and verticals,” he added.
TXOne’s Series B funding round was led by TGVest Capital ($20 million), with participation from KAiA Capital, CDIB Capital Group, CDIB-Innolux L.P, MediaTek, Ta Ya Electric Wire & Cable, Ta Ya Venture Capital, Simplo Technology Group, CHT Security, and Ash Tower Limited, as well as Steven Pan, Silks Hotel Group Chair, and Chun-I Wu, TAYIH Group Chair.
“TXOne, as an early mover and with the unique technology and solutions it has developed, is undoubtedly well positioned to capitalize such growing demand and to protect companies from potential cybersecurity impacts,” DC Cheng, TGVest Capital Chair said. “We at TGVest share TXOne’s vision to be a global leader for Operation Technology cybersecurity.”
TXOne Networks completed its Series A financing last August, and the lead investors at the time JAFCO Asia and Purestone Silks Investment Fund, increased their investment in Series B. At the time, the company said it would use the funds to refine its ICS security products, expand its business in certain regions, and strengthen marketing and after-sales service teams.
Apart from TXOne, another early-stage ICS/OT cybersecurity and asset monitoring company, SynSaber, announced Thursday that it had raised $13 million in Series A funding, bringing the company’s total investment to $15.5 million.
“As the cybersecurity threat landscape increasingly targets industrial assets, we are enabling operators to more effectively see, know, and take action to defend industrial systems and protect critical infrastructure,” Jori VanAntwerp, co-founder/CEO of SynSaber, said in a media statement.
SYN Ventures led the round with participation from additional investors, including Rally Ventures and Cyber Mentor Fund. SynSaber will use the funds to continue advancing its industrial asset and network monitoring solution, expand its global footprint, grow sales, marketing, and development, and further build on customer momentum and industry research.
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