Checkmarx, an Israeli cyber security startup and a unicorn is the latest Israel Startup Nation firm in trouble. The company is laying off 100 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, including 40 people in Israel.
American private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) acquired control of Checkmarx in March 2020. At the time the company had a $1.5 billion valuation. But with the crisis in the global markets and new investments drying up, it is not clear how much the company may be worth today, or if Checkmarx is even still a unicorn. But cyber security is one of the services coming out of Startup Nation Israel that always seems to be in high demand, so the company may be able to bounce back.
The news comes just days after the company announced that it has initiated the process to achieve Federal Risk and Authorization Management program (FedRAMP) authorization status for its Checkmarx One Application Security Platform. FedRAMP promotes the adoption of secure cloud services across the federal government by providing a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.
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“Once authorized, the award-winning Checkmarx One will bring a streamlined, scalable and state-of-the-art application security platform to government customers at a time when AppSec has never been more critical,” said Checkmarx CEO Emmanuel Benzaquen about this. “Simplicity and ease for both developers and AppSec leaders are critical when delivery deadlines are shrinking, and the threat landscape is expanding.”
Unfortunately, the news did not stave off the cutbacks.
Founded in 2006, Checkmarx offers software security solutions for modern enterprise software development. Checkmarx boasts that it delivers the industry’s “most comprehensive” software security platform in Checkmarx One. The company calls this a platform that unifies with DevOps and provides static and interactive application security testing, software composition analysis, and developer application security awareness and training programs to reduce and remediate risk from software vulnerabilities.
Checkmarx says that its stackArmor delivers cloud security, compliance, and managed services solutions to commercial and government customers. The company boasts over 1,800 customers worldwide, including U.S. public sector agencies and nearly half of the Fortune 50.