# Pentera

Pentera is an American cybersecurity software company, specializing in automated security validation solutions. Originally founded as Pcysys in 2015, the company later rebranded as Pentera in 2021. The company is led by Amitai Ratzon (CEO) and Dr. Arik Liberzon (founder and CTO). Pentera has entities in the US, Germany, UK, Israel, Dubai, and Singapore.

## Funding

To date, the company has raised $190 million in primary funding:
* Seed funding (2015-2018): Raised $5 million.
* Series A (November 2019): Raised $10 million from AWZ Ventures and Blackstone Group.
* Series B (September 2020): Raised $25 million from Insight Partners, AWZ Ventures, and Blackstone Group.
* Series C (January 2022): Pentera became a unicorn raising $150 million, out of which $75 million in primary, from K1 Investment Management, Evolution Equity Partners, and Insight Partners. This funding round brought Pentera's valuation to $1 billion.
* Series D (March 2025): Raised $60 million, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Farallon Capital Management.
Pentera has experienced significant growth since its Series C round, increasing Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by more than 300% and expanding its customer base by 200%. The funding supports research and development, AI-driven security validation capabilities, and U.S. market expansion.

## Product

Pentera develops automated security validation software designed to test cybersecurity defenses against real-world attack techniques. The platform enables organizations to identify exploitable vulnerabilities, validate security controls, and prioritize remediation to reduce cyber risk.
The Pentera software employs algorithms to test across the entire IT environment, including the internal and external network attack surfaces, on-premises and cloud-based. The platform is designed to perform automated emulation of ethical attack techniques such as remote code execution, password cracking, and data exfiltration. The platform does not require the installation of software agents on the network’s endpoints, making it compatible with most enterprise systems and security service providers.
The Pentera platform includes the following products and add-on modules:
* Pentera Core Product — Maps, tests, and validates the security controls of the organization’s internal network.
* Pentera Surface Product — Maps, tests and validates the security controls of the organization’s external-facing assets exposed to the internet.
* Pentera Cloud Product — Maps, tests, and validates the security controls across cloud-native infrastructures, emulating real-world attack techniques such as privilege escalation, credential exposure, and lateral movement to assess an organization’s cloud security posture.
* Pentera RansomwareReady Module — Validates the organization’s resilience against the latest known ransomware attacks by testing exploitation paths and security controls.
* Pentera Credentials Exposure Module — leverages data of real-world leaked credentials sources to identify compromised credentials from the dark web, encrypted storage, and internal sources to analyze potential attack pathways across the organization's internal and external attack surfaces.

## Security Research & Pentera Labs

Pentera Labs is the company's research division, dedicated to monitoring cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and attack techniques. The team actively contributes to threat intelligence research, publishes findings, and integrates security insights into the Pentera platform. Its publications are available for cyber defenders to identify, analyze, emulate, and mitigate new adversary tactics and techniques in the wild.
Pentera Labs also disclosed newly discovered "zero day" vulnerabilities and contributed to adversary tactics techniques and procedures (TTPs) to the MITRE ATT&CK matrix.

### Notable Pentera Labs research includes:

* Fortinet CVE-2024-47574 – A critical authentication bypass vulnerability discovered in January 2024 that allowed attackers to gain administrator privileges without authentication. Pentera Labs reported the issue to Fortinet, leading to an official security patch.
* Microsoft Azure Functions XSS Vulnerability – A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability found in January 2023, affecting Microsoft Azure Functions. Reported by Pentera Labs and later patched by Microsoft.
* "135 Is the New 445" (September 2022) – A technique discovered by Pentera Labs that enables lateral movement across networks via Windows TCP port 135, an attack path previously less monitored than traditional SMB-based exploits.
* VMware Zero-Day Vulnerabilities (March 2022) – Pentera Labs uncovered two zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-22948 & CVE-2021-22015) in VMware vCenter, impacting 500,000+ enterprise environments globally. The findings led to security patches issued by VMware.
The research findings from Pentera Labs are continuously integrated into the Pentera platform to help organizations test their resilience against real-world cyber threats.

## Technology & Testing Approach

Pentera’s Automated Security Validation platform uses real-world attack techniques to continuously test and validate an organization’s cybersecurity defenses. Unlike traditional penetration testing or vulnerability scanning tools, Pentera:
* Emulates adversarial attack paths without requiring manual execution.
* Tests both external and internal attack surfaces (on-prem, cloud, hybrid).
* Performs automated security validation across identity management, misconfigurations, unpatched vulnerabilities, and credential exposure risks.
* Does not require agents (agentless approach), making it suitable for a wide range of enterprise IT environments.
By providing continuous attack emulation, Pentera enables security teams to proactively identify exploitable attack paths and remediate critical vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.