Public Relations

Asgent Announces Investment in Connected Car and IoT Security Company Karamba

May 10, 2017
Asgent, Inc.
(JASDAQ: 4288)

Asgent, Inc. (JASDAQ: 4288, President & CEO: Takahiro Sugimoto, located in Chuo-ku, Tokyo), a pioneer in network security and operations management solutions, announces that it has made an investment of US$1 million (about 6% of total investment amount) in Karamba Security Ltd (CEO & Co-founder：Ami Dotan, located in Israel), the developer of autonomous security products "Carwall" and "IoTwall", designed to prevent cyber-attacks against connected cars and IoT devices.,

[Features of Karamba]
  Karamba's autonomous security products "Carwall" and "IoTwall" are security solutions to prevent cyber-attacks against connected cars and IoT devices. Security configurations are implemented in the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) itself during the IoT device manufacturing phase, enabling the device to prevent against attacks without the need for signature file updates.
  Also, settings made at the factory are automatically learnt by the device, and a security policy is automatically generated to detect and prevent against any behavior that does not match the settings. This allows for zero-day protection to be provided across the lifecycle of the device to be protected. In addition, this security functionality is not limited only to the automotive industry, but can be implemented in architectures controlled by controllers in devices such as IoT and medical devices, along with drones. The superiority of this product concept has led to the technology gaining a lot of attention, having received the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award for product innovation in the automotive industry, and being selected as one of the Forbes Israel 2016 Top10 Security Ventures.
  Asgent completed a distributorship agreement with Karamba in November 2016, and is the only domestic distributor performing sales promotion activities in the Japan market. This investment marks Series B of funding, and the US $1 million invested by Asgent will be used to expand Karamba's research & development, customer support and sales structure. By making this investment along with influential venture capitalists (VC) from the U.S. and Israel, Asgent will continue to perform sales promotion activities with Karamba to provide autonomous security technology in the Japan automotive and IoT markets.

[Investment Objective]
  Karamba has moved from initial investment stealth model in 2016 to the product provision phase. In the following 13 months, Karamba has had PoCs with 16 automotive makers and Tier-1 companies (companies that directly provide parts to automotive makers), and has received inquiries from many other companies. Asgent plans on sharing growth with Karamba through investment, taking on new and massive security demand, with the rock solid framework of creating 15 billion Yen in sales (3.1 times cf. FY2016) and 2 billion Yen in profit (6 times cf. FY2016) in FY2020, as announced in the "Mid-term Management Plan: Plan for 6 times larger profits in 2020 (cf. 2016)" on May 15, 2017 (Japanese language only).