Brook Portfolio Company Security Innovation Acquires Safelight

Brook Portfolio Company Security Innovation announces the acquisition of Safelight

Wilmington, Mass., – July 10, 2014 – Security Innovation, an authority in software security assessment and training, announced the acquisition of Safelight, a firm that specializes in information security and developer training. The move strengthens Security Innovation’s already impressive footprint in the application security training market, and significantly expands the company’s ability to provide comprehensive training solutions to Information Security and IT Risk organizations.

The acquisition is the next step in a strategy to educate software teams and staff on critical security topics and empower them to succeed in their security goals. It comes on the heels of the company’s release of PCI Essentials cardholder data security training program, created in partnership with the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). All Safelight staff will be retained and key executives will assume leadership roles within the company’s business units, which now include Application Security, Information Security, and Embedded Security.

“Low security awareness among employees is an inhibitor to security. This has been represented in IDC surveys that point out that concerns about employees not following security policy is the top security challenge facing organization”, said Charles Kolodgy, research VP at IDC. “Organizations need to improve their security education efforts which can turn employees into an asset instead of a liability. The combination of Security Innovation and Safelight will improve the offerings available to companies.”

“Security Innovation’s training solutions are our fastest growing line of business,” said Ed Adams, CEO of Security Innovation. “Safelight’s expertise in InfoSec & Privacy Awareness and their commitment to excellence will raise the competitive bar even further and accelerate growth in a market hungry for high quality security education.”

Despite billions of dollars spent on security products, lack of security education continues to put organizations at risk, according to the latest research from The Ponemon Institute. However, training is only one of the necessary elements of a program designed to change behavior. Continuous and compelling reinforcement is necessary to affect real change. Together, Security Innovation and Safelight address this need by offering enablement programs and persistent assets to ensure that staff remains security conscious and implement acquired knowledge in the proper manner. The combined curriculum totals more than 80 courses, and 120 hours; double the nearest competitor with coverage of all major development languages, computing platforms and data security topics.

“The security industry has put an overwhelming bias on the use of technology to solve a problem largely caused by people” said Michael Maziarz, co-founder of Safelight. “Safelight has spent years developing innovative methodologies and learning techniques that maximize knowledge retention and drive behavior change. Having access to Security Innovation’s deep technical staff, efficient delivery operations, and global partner channel will allow us to serve our customers with greatly enhanced capabilities”.

Due to the strong brand loyalty of Safelight customers and the high quality of their training content, the company’s product line will remain unchanged in the short-term and serve as the cornerstone of Security Innovation’s information security training arm. Safelight customers will continue to be fully supported while benefitting from Security Innovation’s global support team, complementary solutions, and world-class services.

About Security Innovation

An application security pioneer since 2002, Security Innovation is dedicated to making software more resilient within the world’s most challenging environments; whether on the web, in devices or in the cloud. Recognizing that application software no longer exists in isolation, our clients are better prepared to anticipate, navigate and reduce software security risk regardless of technology or system complexity. There are more than a million licenses of Security Innovation’s eLearning products in use today and our embedded security products ship on tens of millions of systems each year. www.securityinnovation.com

https://www.securityinnovation.com/products/team-academy.html

About Safelight Security

Leveraging deep expertise and innovative approaches to security education, Safelight helps organizations build comprehensive education programs that measurably shift the way employees think about protecting sensitive data. Safelight offers a full range of instructor-led and on-demand courses for development, IT and general staff; each role-specific course is part of a larger program designed to cultivate a culture of security across the organization. www.safelightsecurity.com