BUSINESS OVERVIEW

Provides a BOTs and advanced persistent threats (APTs) detection solution for corporate and data center networks

THE BAIN CAPITAL ADVANTAGE AT WORK

The unfolding story of the partnership between Attivo and Bain Capital is one of mutual deep expertise in cybersecurity and seamless collaboration to create a technology that stops malicious hackers in their attempts to exploit IT systems and exfiltrate data.

The success of Attivo starts with its team, which has years of experience solving complex cybersecurity issues. In 2014, they brought an idea to Bain Capital that focused on an outside-the-firewall technology that would prevent an attacker from discovering a network. Our initial feedback was that the opportunity might not be large enough, but given the credibility of the team, we asked them to keep iterating on the idea.

The team came back to Bain Capital with the core of what became Attivo – a novel idea to protect businesses from the weakest link in the cyber kill chain: lateral movement. The Attivo technology is focused on defeating the tactics used by cybercriminals who get inside a company’s network and move laterally to discover targets and cause disruption or exfiltrate data. Essentially, Attivo sets a trap for attackers who erroneously think they are attacking something important inside the corporate network. Attivo thereby identifies and prevents that bad actor from continuing its lateral movement inside the IT environment.

Given our long experience backing successful cybersecurity concepts, like Rapid7 and Red Balloon Security, Bain Capital recognized this revised business model as a potentially huge opportunity.

Bain Capital and Attivo worked together very closely through the seed, A, B and C rounds to fine-tune the business thesis. Bain Capital itself was an early referenceable customer of Attivo, and Mark Sutton, our Global CISO, was highly engaged with the company in vetting new features and helping to share the direction of the product. With some additional help from the broader Bain Capital platform in building out a go-to-market strategy, Attivo is among the fastest-growing technology companies in the world and is on its way to becoming an essential piece of infrastructure in corporate IT systems.