Energy Impact Partners LP (EIP) today announced that it has closed a $10 million investment in Dragos Inc., an industrial control system (ICS) cybersecurity company focused on securing global industrial infrastructure.
The investment round was co-led by EIP and Allegis Capital, with additional support from DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup studio that initially funded Dragos. The funding will be used to increase the company's workforce to meet rising customer demand, generated through key partnerships with Deloitte, the global audit and financial advisory services firm, and CrowdStrike, a provider of cloud-delivered endpoint protection.
Dragos was founded by ICS cybersecurity experts who are veterans of the U.S. intelligence community. The company has applied its background in cybersecurity to develop a unique approach to behavioral analytics that involves codifying human experience, identifying adversary tradecraft, and extrapolating key behavioral analytics. As a result, Dragos is able to provide defenders with actionable recommendations on what to do next -- not merely a series of alerts.
"This marks our first investment in cybersecurity, a mission-critical sector for our global utility coalition. The Dragos team is comprised of the world's foremost experts in ICS security, and we look forward to supporting their continued innovation," said Hans Kobler, CEO and Managing Partner of Energy Impact Partners. "One of the critical challenges in ICS security is access to sufficient human capital," added Sameer Reddy, Vice President at EIP and new member of the Dragos Board of Directors. "The Dragos platform, which is built and managed by true ICS cybersecurity experts, provides significant force multiplication to industrial operators around the world."
"As a company whose mission is to safeguard civilization, it's gratifying for us to partner with an investment firm that represents companies that so many rely on for safe, reliable, and affordable power," said Robert M. Lee, CEO of Dragos. "EIP adds the global energy sector to our addressable markets, ensuring that we are not only operating as a profitable business, but also staying focused on the needs of the larger community."
"Energy is essential to our economy and way of life. As a result, energy infrastructure is increasingly a target," said Thomas A. Fanning, Chairman, President and CEO of Southern Company. "As a founding investor in Energy Impact Partners, Southern Company is proud to support enhancing the resiliency of critical infrastructure, in order to better protect the communities where we live and serve."
About Energy Impact Partners
Energy Impact Partners is a private equity firm that strategically invests in innovative technologies, services, and products throughout the electricity supply chain from generation to consumption. Through close collaboration with its investor base, EIP seeks to bring the best companies, buying power and vision in the industry to bear on the emerging energy landscape. EIP's utility partners include Southern Company, National Grid, Xcel Energy, Ameren, Great Plains Energy, Fortis Inc., AGL, Avista, MGE Energy Inc., TEPCO, PTT Public Company Limited, OGE Energy Corp., TransCanada, and Alliant Energy. For more information, visit www.energyimpactpartners.com.
About Dragos Inc.
Dragos Inc., based in Hanover, Maryland, is the trusted authority on threats to industrial networks (ICS/IoT). The Dragos Platform is an on-premise or cloud-based security technology that continually and passively collects data to perform asset identification, detects cyber threats through industrial-specific behavioral analytics, and enables better efficiency and effectiveness of security personnel through the codification of automated workflows, best practices and incident response procedures. The Dragos Platform is continually enhanced through the Dragos Threat Operations Center, a team of experts providing services that include incident response, threat hunting, and compromise assessments. Both are backed by Dragos Intelligence, which allows for the analysis of adversary intrusions, provides the industry with weekly threat intelligence reports and adds new behavioral analytics to the Dragos Platform. For more information, visit https://dragos.com.
