At the beginning of 2021, Acronis predicted an increase in aggressive cybercrime activity as criminals pivoted their attacks from data encryption to data exfiltration, or crucial data being copied or illegally transferred.
In 2020, analysts at cybersecurity company Acronis found evidence that more than 1,000 companies globally had their data leaked following ransomware attacks. This increase in cybercrime activity was a result of the shift to remote work, with attacks spanning data encryption, data exfiltration, and crucial data being copied or illegally transferred.
As attacks become more common, there is a growing need for a cybersecurity vendor that specializes in services that cover a variety of areas, which is exactly what Acronis does.
The Switzerland-based company provides multiple security services in a single, unified platform and common user interface. Enhanced by AI-based Active Protection technology, blockchain-based authentication, and hybrid-cloud architecture, Acronis protects all data in any environment, including physical, virtual, cloud, mobile workloads, and applications.
Now the company has announced it has raised $250 million in private equity funding led by CVC Capital Partners VII. The funding round set the total valuation of the company at over $2.5 billion.
This news arrives as OWC announced that it would make Acronis True Image OEM software available on OWC storage solutions that include SoftRAID. The addition of Acronis True Image OEM will make sure that when users make a backup of their system onto an OWC external storage system, a reliable copy of the data is made ready in case it is needed for a speedy recovery. The solution is battle-tested, stopping more than 600,000 ransomware attacks last year alone.
The new funding round will allow Acronis to invest further in its vision of holistic cyber protection. The company also said that it will continue to invest in staff resources, expanding its global sales, partner account management, and partner success teams, and hiring new technical talent for its research and development centers in Bulgaria, Israel, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.S. This fundraising gives Acronis what it needs for the company's next steps, including the possibility of going public.
“A company of our track record and growth, it's obviously a target for investment banking people to basically come and talk to us constantly,” Ezequiel Steiner, Acronis’s Business President said. “We definitely are thinking about it. It's one of the potential options to ensure that we both give liquidity to our shareholders and also to have access to capital to do more to invest more into the company.”
