Illusive Networks Breakthrough 2019 Q4 Results Confirm Analyst Predictions for Rapid Cyber Deception Marketplace Growth

NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Illusive Networks®, the leader in deception-based cyber defense solutions, today announced it has achieved breakout results in Q4, growing revenues 92% over Q4 2018, and 74% sequentially, capping a strong year of growth in 2019. The quarter included competitive wins at both large global enterprises and small to medium businesses across virtually all major industry categories, with renewals and expansions from loyal customers also running well ahead of plan.

Deception Market Growth

As a rapidly growing category within the $150B+ cybersecurity market, Deception is garnering attention from industry analysts, security specialists, investors, and most importantly, major customers due to its ability to accurately and effectively eradicate the most pernicious forms of advanced attacks without generating the flood of false alarms associated with traditional analytic and AI-based approaches.

Observers from all facets of the industry have recently noted increasing adoption of Deception technologies including the following analysts and experts:

• Gartner's November research report, "Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: Security" (paywall) suggested that deception technology offers "easy to deploy, deterministic, and effective threat detection capabilities for enterprises of all sizes." They went on to say that deception technology is a simple, efficient and practical way to identify threats, giving it the highest possible range rating for a particular technology category – "Now" – meaning that Gartner expects it to be adopted by the early majority of buyers in 2020. Deception was also rated "High" in terms of mass, meaning that Gartner expects the technology to affect a wide breadth of market sectors and greatly disrupt existing products and services. 
   
• A GigaOm report entitled "Deception Technology: Techniques for Detecting Breaches Using Decoys and Lures" from September noted that deception is no longer a luxury, and that it provides a high return on investment wherever it is deployed by enabling faster breach detection and reduced attacker dwell times. The report mentioned that deception gives organizations a deep understanding of their own networks, systems, and the relationships between them, and that "thanks to its ease of deployment, low overhead, management simplicity, scalability, and ability to provide operators with insights that have an extremely low number of false positives, [deception] is a technology that almost any enterprise—small, medium, or large—could employ to an enormous advantage." 
   
• Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) declared that deception technology decreased average attacker dwell time on a typical enterprise network from 100 to just 5.5 days—a 91% reduction for those that employed deception technology versus those who had not. EMA further commented that deception technology "can be used to reduce business risks across a wide range of different use cases" and spoke approvingly of its low false-positive rate and proactive early threat detection capability. 

"It's exciting and gratifying to see Illusive's innovative technology now being rolled out across the world's largest enterprises, and delivering value well beyond expectations," said Illusive CEO Ofer Israeli. "For too long, attackers had the upper hand – they only needed to be right - or get lucky - once for their attacks to succeed. With Illusive's Deception-based technology, one wrong move foils the attack and catches the attacker red-handed, flipping the cyber asymmetry and putting defenders back in charge."

Illusive reverses the archetypal disadvantage burdening cyber defenders by paralyzing advanced attackers and malicious insiders. Unlike probabilistic big data or AI approaches such as NTA or UEBA, which require extensive set-up and constant tuning yet still deliver high rates of false positive alerts, Illusive deterministically and efficiently reports actual incidents in real time. With Illusive in place, one wrong move by an attacker instantly reveals their presence with absolute certainty and provides the defender with actionable and prosecution-ready forensic data. 

Illusive Strategic Wins

The Deception market has grown increasingly competitive, with many prospects now restricting Deception-related RFIs and RFPs to established market leaders such as Illusive. In 2019, Illusive saw its opportunity pipeline grow exponentially, and Illusive's proven, enterprise-ready solution is now implemented across six continents by leading organizations. In 2019, Illusive regularly beat out competitors in strategic deals across all industries including:

• Global financial services organizations, where one security team leader stated, "We like how Illusive discovers an attacker at the source of the event. When we get an alert, we know that there is an attacker, and we also know that the attacker is not seeing the real network. This gives us time to be strategic and stop attacks before they cause damage."
   
• Manufacturing, where Illusive was chosen in Q4 by one of the world's most iconic automotive brands following a highly competitive bake-off. Recently the CISO of a large multi-national industrial control vendor said, "Threats and their potential impact are escalating, from financial or reputational damage to actual tampering and destruction of assets. No CISO can afford to be without Illusive's deception platform in their environment today."
   
• Energy firms, among which one security officer expressed, "Illusive cut investigation time by two-thirds. The graphical dashboard shows us where the attacker is in relation to crown jewels. We can quickly drill down to specific details, and Illusive automatically gives us a timeline of what has happened on the endpoint. It's invaluable."
   
• Several of the world's largest law firms, including one where a security operations manager noted that "Illusive stood out for its unique approach. By planting realistic deceptions that perfectly match our environment and tripling the number of hosts an attacker sees, we can quickly force him to make a wrong choice."
   
• Large healthcare organizations, where one security analyst revealed, "We have a new level of confidence in our data security, and our management, board, and investors clearly understand Illusive's business value to the company. They're very happy about having Illusive in place."
   
• Commerce firms, including many of the most preeminent brands in online and retail, represent some of Illusive's largest deployments at up to hundreds of thousands of protected endpoints. One of the security managers at a leading worldwide e-commerce retailer divulged that "Illusive is the foundation of our incident response plan and has rapidly elevated our security level. Every part of our network is covered by a maze of deception, and I can zero in on an attacker within two lateral movements more than 98% of the time. Illusive gives us a lot of confidence that we are protecting the business."

"Cybersecurity customers are overwhelmed by a market full of noise, and hungry for fact-based and practical defense approaches that genuinely find and stop the tsunami of breaches affecting every organization regardless of size or industry," said Bob Horn, Chief Revenue Officer at Illusive Networks. "Illusive's success in a crowded cybersecurity market validates our strategy, which strips out the smoke and mirrors. Instead, we deliver easy-to-consume technology that supplies tangible results - stopping attackers in their tracks and allowing organizations to operate without fear." 

The Illusive Platform

The Illusive Platform is comprised of three integrated solutions that preempt, detect and respond to advanced cyberthreats, providing a comprehensive approach to mitigate threats quickly, before attackers can get near an organization's crown jewels: 

• Attack Surface Manager preempts attacks by finding and removing errant credentials, connections and attack pathways to deter unauthorized lateral movement. 
   
• Attack Detection System spreads an inescapable web of data deceptions on an organization's endpoints to disorient and manipulate an attacker's decision-making once they are inside the perimeter, forcing them to reveal their presence as soon as they inevitably interact with the fake data. 
   
• Attack Intelligence System provides contextual source and target forensics once deceptive data is engaged by attackers, to enable rapid, effective response and remediation to intruders and malicious insiders alike. 

Q4 updates to the Illusive Platform included a new series of emulations to further protect critical areas where traditional security approaches face fresh challenges: IoT (Internet of Things), OT (Operational Technology), and network components such as routers and switches. These emulations provide organizations broader security coverage as the digital transformation and the evolution of advanced persistent threats expand the attack surface.

Award Winning Solutions

Already widely recognized as the leading innovator in modern deception technology, Illusive Networks continued to garner awards and accolades throughout 2019, including:

• SC Labs, in a wide-ranging 2019 review of the various deception solutions available on the market, gave the Illusive Platform a five-star rating overall and in each rating category, including features, documentation, value for money, performance, support, and ease of use. The glowing review declared that the "Illusive Networks Deception Management System sets the standard for deception realism and dynamic attacker pacing. The tool's maneuverability with a deception environment to constantly trap and deceive attackers accounts for the offering's undefeated record against Red Teams. This level of deception sophistication with ease of use makes this the SC Labs Recommended product for this month's round of reviews."
• Chosen to participate in Kickstart Innovation, a highly competitive Swiss program where startups are matched with multinational corporations to develop innovation partnerships
• Founder and CEO Ofer Israeli nominated for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 Award
• "Red Herring Top 100 Global Award" as one of the most promising technology companies in the world
• Named to CNBC's "Upstart 100 List"
• Awarded "Best Deception Technology" by SC Media Europe
• In Q4, industry research firm Tracxn named Illusive a 'Soonicorn' (soon to be a Unicorn worth over $1B), designated as a highly valued startup which has successfully grown to over a few hundred million dollars in value

Illusive is Aggressively Hiring

Success in 2019, and the bright future analysts and customers alike see for the deception market, means Illusive is aggressively hiring in all departments and regions. Those interested in creating a world where defenders are dominant over attackers, and organizations of all kinds can freely leverage the power of the internet to do business without fear of being victimized, are encouraged to review openings on the Illusive Networks Careers page. 

About Illusive Networks

Illusive Networks uses next-generation deception technology to stop cyber-attacks by detecting and disarming attackers, destroying their decision-making processes, and depriving them of the means to laterally move towards attack targets. Illusive's inescapable deception and attack surface reduction capabilities eliminate high-risk pathways to critical systems, force attackers to reveal themselves early in the threat lifecycle, and capture real-time forensics that accelerate incident response. Built on agentless, advanced automation and requiring very little security team support, Illusive immediately shifts the advantage to defenders, freeing precious resources from the complicated and data-heavy approaches that overload them today.

For more information, visit https://www.illusivenetworks.com, contact us at [email protected] or follow on LinkedIn, @Illusivenw on Twitter and Facebook.

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SOURCE Illusive Networks

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