Exabeam Prepares For Series B Funding Round, Looks To Recruit Security-Focused Channel Partners

As Exabeam prepares to announce an upcoming Series B funding round, company executives said the security startup plans to invest heavily in expanding its channel program.

Exabeam is a San Mateo, Calif.-based company that is working to "put the brain on SIEM" technology. It will achieve this through behavior analytics to build user patterns and pinpoint behavior that is out of the ordinary and that could be due to an attack.

While Exabeam isn't the only company using behavior analytics to get ahead of threats, the company said it sets itself apart with stateful user tracking and building a timeline of a user's threat movement instead of just sending an alert.

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The company, which was founded two years ago, has already attracted big-name investors for its technology, raising $10 million in Series A funding last year from Norwest Venture Partners, Aspect Ventures and angel investor Shlomo Kramer, who has helped founded, or was an early investor in, some of the biggest names in security, including Check Point Software Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Trusteer and Imperva.

Now, Exabeam is pulling together the final details and getting ready to announce its next Series B funding round within the next two months. That funding will be funneled directly into developing the company's growing channel program, Executive Vice President of Field Operations Ralph Pisani said.

"The round that we're going to take ... is going to be to build out channel infrastructure globally," Pisani said.

The amount of the funding expected was not disclosed.

To fuel that effort, the company has already brought in top channel leaders, including the addition of former Imperva channel chief Ted Plumis as vice president of channels, business and corporate development, in July.

Exabeam is already a 100 percent channel-focused company, but Plumis told CRN that the upcoming funding will be used to expand its go-to-market through the channel, including adding more channel account managers, channel support executives and recruiting more partners.

Exabeam also is working to build out industry partnerships with major log management and SIEM vendors, including Q Radar, LogRhythm, Splunk and HP ArcSight. By layering the Exabeam technology on top of an existing SIEM deployment, Plumis said customers can get more value out of their existing solutions, and partners can get higher sales margins.

"What we want to do is make your existing technology smarter and more efficient, and lower the time it takes you to solve a problem. The best route to market for us is these other SIEM vendors integrating our technology, which they're already starting to do, and then us partnering with their channel," Plumis said.

Through both developing its own channel and adding partners through vendor relationships, Plumis said Exabeam hopes to grow from the approximately 10 partners that it has today to around 50 in the U.S. and Western Europe. In particular, Plumis said that it is looking for security-focused partners and managed security service providers.

"We're 100 percent channel. We won't change from that model," Plumis said.

PUBLISHED JULY 24, 2015