VisibleRisk team.( Company Photo Doron Letzter)
American cybersecurity company BitSight is shutting down the operations of its Israeli office which was once the independent Israeli cybersecurity startup VisibleRisk. VisibleRisk was used as an R&D center by BitSight, but now its 40 employees will be losing their jobs. No reason has yet been given for the shutdown.
BitSight acquired VisibleRisk in September 2021 with part of the funds from a $250 million investment from Moody’s Corporation.
So, even cybersecurity firms in Israel Startup Nation are not immune from the continuing global financial crisis. The crisis has seen many firms forced to cut staff, delay IPOS, lower their valuations and even close down entirely in the year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The invasion is credited as causing many of the problems in world markets because of the instability it caused and insecurity among investors. And both the US and EU imposed sanctions on Russia and Russian oligarchs which led to the freezing of countless assets that could otherwise be used for investment and a jump in the price of oil.
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The news comes just days after Israel’s Playika shuttered its subsidiary Israeli studio Jelly Button entirely. Wix, the Israeli founded do-it-yourself website building platform, let go of 370 employees. And in January Israeli global engineering and construction group Tahal, which was founded in 1842 to bring water to Israel’s local communities, was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Founded in 2019, VisibleRisk is a joint venture between Moody’s Corporation, a global leader in risk assessment, and Team8, a cybersecurity-focused company creation platform, that is focused on creating a standard benchmark for communicating cyber risk to Boards of Directors and senior business executives in order to improve the global dialog about this important issue.
At the time of Visible Risk’s acquisition Steve Harvey, President and Chief Executive Officer of BitSight, commented “Cybersecurity is one of the biggest threats to global commerce in the 21st century. Our partnership with Moody’s and acquisition of VisibleRisk expands our reach to help customers manage cyber risk in an increasingly digital world.”
