KnowBe4 Expands into Brazil with the Acquisition of El Pescador

TAMPA BAY, Fla. and SAO PAULO, Feb. 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- KnowBe4, the provider of the world's largest security awareness training and simulated phishing, announced it has entered the Brazilian market by purchasing El Pescador, a company previously owned by Tempest – a national cybersecurity leader. Through this new relationship, El Pescador will continue to operate, now as an independent subsidiary of KnowBe4, and maintain its brand.

The security awareness training and simulated phishing market is one of the fastest growing subsets of cybersecurity, and this new relationship will be beneficial to all three companies involved. El Pescador will continue to offer its customers new, innovative functionalities and technological improvements; and Tempest, which purchased El Pescador in 2015, will remain a strategic business partner of KnowBe4.

According to Rafael Silva, founder and CEO of El Pescador, the aquisition will provide the Brazilian company with more investments and the expansion of services, products and functionalities, as well as an accelerated growth in the sales of licenses and programs. "Since we were acquired by Tempest in 2015, we have been growing more than 100 percent a year. With the arrival of KnowBe4, our expectation is that this pace will be even faster. The proof is that we have already planned for the next few months the hiring of 30 more people, increasing our staff by three times," he says.

"Our goal is to deliver new content every month to our users with interactive and engaging training modules," says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. "This acquisition enables us to deliver new training content, allowing our customers to customize their security awareness programs with the right training at the right time for their organizations. We look forward to working with El Pescador's professionals to help our customers improve the security of their organizations."

"El Pescador has a fantastic team and I look forward to having them on board," says Kevin Mitnick, KnowBe4's chief hacking officer.

Tempest's founder and CEO, Cristiano Lincoln Mattos, describes the acquisition that happened in 2015 as an ideal relationship. "There has always been a lot of synergy. El Pescador offered a complementary line of work to ours and to the portfolio we offered. And the "marriage" went so well that El Pescador did not stop growing. We were looked at by the biggest worldwide company in the sector. During our assessment, it was crucial that the negotiations were positive for our customers, for the El Pescador team and also for Tempest's position in the awareness market, which we have been fostering throughout this journey."  

"I think we have achieved all of these goals, and we are very happy with the final results," said Mattos. "We will continue to work, now in partnership with KnowBe4."

El Pescador's work in education, awareness and simulation of phishing attacks will add to KnowBe4's massive library of security awareness training content. Going forward in this new relationship with KnowBe4, El Pescador will focus on the generation of research and engaging content, as well as on making available to the Brazilian market the same security tool used by millions of people around the world.

For more information on El Pescador, visit https://www.elpescador.com.br/. For more information on KnowBe4, visit www.knowbe4.com.

About El Pescador

Founded in 2014, El Pescador is the first Brazilian platform to conduct simulations of phishing attacks and security awareness training. Leader in the national security awareness market, El Pescador has developed an exclusive educational cycle methodology with content focused on education about phishing - available in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French. Through simulations of phishing attacks, El Pescador indicates the level of risk employees face, and teaches them to recognize threats in face of a real attack in the corporate environment.

About KnowBe4

KnowBe4, the world's most popular integrated security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 23,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as the last line of defense.

Number 96 on the list Inc. 500 of 2018, number 34 on 2018's Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, and 2nd place in Cybersecurity Ventures Cybersecurity 500, KnowBe4 is headquartered in Tampa Bay, Florida, with offices in England, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa and Singapore.

About Tempest

Founded in 2000, Tempest was born as a startup incubated at the Recife Digital Port, one of the main and most advanced technology hubs in Brazil. Reference for its technical expertise, integrity, operational maturity and delivery capacity, Tempest expanded its portfolio when it purchased the company EZ-Security, in February 2018, and also offered the integration of technology products in cybersecurity, becoming the largest digital protection company for business viability in Brazil, with revenues higher than R $ 100 million in 2017, 280 employees and a wide list of clients in Brazil and abroad, attended to by the offices of Recife, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and London.

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SOURCE KnowBe4