You Can’t Protect What You Can’t See: Why We Invested in Armis

At Brookfield Growth we continue to invest behind bold entrepreneurs and innovative companies that are redesigning the way in which our digital world meets the physical one. Across Brookfield’s diversified asset base, we’ve seen a rapid rise in the number of connected devices across almost every asset type. This includes everything from offices with smart HVAC systems, to retail malls with mobile POS terminals, to hospitals with medical vital monitors, to manufacturing plants with SCADA systems, and to wind farms with vibration sensors. When we widen the lens beyond just Brookfield, the number of connected devices globally has grown exponentially over the last decade and is expected to reach 39 billion by 2025, up from 22 billion in 2018. While we believe that more connectivity will ultimately result in greater efficiency and productivity, a very real and growing side effect is the visibility gap where 82% of organizations are unable to identify, let alone protect, all devices connected to their networks. As most of these devices are unagentable, meaning they cannot support the installation of specialized software on the devices themselves, this represents a growing attack surface that is difficult to secure by traditional security solutions.

While this visibility gap persists and only grows, we knew that the importance of risk management related to device protection was an emerging category that had to be felt by asset owners and operators everywhere.

Enter Armis.

Beginning in 2019, Brookfield underwent an extensive two-year industry evaluation, and it was clear that Armis was the only platform able to serve and scale globally across the vast industries in which we operate whether it be infrastructure, real estate, renewables, healthcare or telecom. “Armis’ ability to monitor both managed and unmanaged devices across IT, IoT, IoMT and OT gives organizations a single pane of glass across all environments and mitigates their risks, as their ability to see everything enables IT teams to put the appropriate security in place to protect them from bad actors,” said Zaki Abbas, Chief Information Security Officer, Brookfield Asset Management.

Brookfield Growth led Armis’ Series B financing in Feburary 2021 alongside existing investors Insight Partners, CapitalG, and Georgian. Our investment thesis was influenced by Armis’ ability to quickly scale across our many end markets, from healthcare to nuclear power and everything in between offering 100% asset visibility. Beyond this, its ability to leverage a growing device knowledgebase of then 500 million, now over 1 billion, devices created a level of domain expertise that suited the needs of our many device types.

Armis provides customers with a blueprint to their organization, functioning as a real-time map for every asset and device in every environment. This allows companies to automatically discover, aggregate and contextualize all asset data regardless of type or location into one single source of truth, and empowers users to monitor, assess and mitigate risks. On average, customers see 50% to 70% more devices after deploying Armis. As a cloud-based agentless solution, Armis does not require installation of software on the device itself which simplifies and speeds up deployment while causing no disruption to the operations of devices.

Since our initial investment, large-scale attacks against the likes of Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and CNA Financial have only intensified the need to protect the built world against cyber threats. Organizations are increasingly turning to Armis as the most comprehensive and effective security solution for agentless devices, driving the company’s significant continued growth. The recent Series C announcement led by One Equity Partners is a testament to what Armis continues to build. The new funding will support further globalization and expansion of its platform capabilities.

Congratulations to Yevgeny, Nadir, and the entire Armis team on this incredible milestone. We at Brookfield Growth are honored to have been a part of the journey!