PR87432

SINGAPORE, Jan. 05, 2021 /PRNewswire＝KYODO JBN/ --

Acquisition Will Further Accelerate White Ops' Growth and Expansion in New Markets

White Ops[ https://www.whiteops.com/ ] ("White Ops" or the "Company"), a global

leader in protecting enterprises and internet platforms from digital fraud and

abuse, today announced its acquisition by Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking

Division, in partnership with ClearSky Security and NightDragon (together, the

"Sponsors"). The Sponsors are acquiring the business from previous investors

Paladin Capital Group, Grotech Ventures, and other shareholders, and the

acquisition follows Goldman Sachs' and ClearSky's initial investment in the

Company earlier this year [https://www.whiteops.com/newsroom/white-ops-receives-investment-from-goldman-sachs-merchant-banking-division-and-clearsky-security-to-support-next-phase-of-growth ]. The acquisition has formally closed and terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition will support White Ops in its next phase of growth and further

accelerate its expansion into new markets. The Company's core focus is to

protect enterprises from sophisticated bot attacks and fraud across the domains

of cybersecurity, digital advertising, and marketing, serving some of the

largest enterprises and internet platforms. This year, as more companies moved

to digital, White Ops was called upon on behalf of its customers to verify the

humanity of more than 10 trillion interactions per week and growing, providing

an incredibly broad and deep platform to stop nefarious activity across the

internet. The company grew the number of customers it serves by 40% and

employees of the company grew by 25% to 170.

"Goldman Sachs, ClearSky, and NightDragon are ideal partners to support the

next phase of the Company's evolution and growth across multiple markets, use

cases and geographies," said Tamer Hassan, CEO and co-founder of White Ops.

"Their continued support of our mission to disrupt the economics of cybercrime,

global network of relationships, and market expertise provides a very strong

foundation to execute on our vision to enable collective protection for the internet."

"We have been very pleased with the Company's performance since our initial

investment and we're delighted to build on our current partnership, especially

as White Ops continues to benefit from consumers' shift to digital and clients

increasingly require protection," said Anthony Arnold, Managing Director at

Goldman Sachs. "We look forward to supporting management in their next phase of growth."

"White Ops' highly differentiated technology platform and scaled signal

collection footprint help its clients protect against a wide range of

sophisticated fraud types," said Matthew Popper, Managing Director at Goldman

Sachs. "We look forward to working with management and our partners at ClearSky

and NightDragon to accelerate the Company's expansion into new markets."

"As fraud and abuse become increasingly prevalent across the digital ecosystem,

enterprises and internet platforms require sophisticated threat protection now

more than ever. White Ops has proven that it can stop fraud and abuse at

tremendous scale," said Jay Leek, Managing Partner of ClearSky. "We have spent

a lot of time with their leadership team over the past year and have been

impressed with the strength and quality of their platform. We look forward to

partnering to continue to build on the Company's' leadership position in the industry."

"Through our experience in engaging with hundreds of enterprises and their

cybersecurity teams, we know that automated attacks on applications creating

fraud and abuse is a critical point of risk to every security and marketing

team," said Dave DeWalt, Founder and Managing Director at NightDragon. "We look

forward to partnering with the team at White Ops to help clients across a range

of industries."

In addition to representatives from Goldman Sachs, Jay Leek will join the Board

of Directors representing ClearSky and Dave DeWalt will join the Board of

Directors representing NightDragon and serve as Vice Chairman of the Company.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as financial advisor to White Ops. Legal counsel

was provided to White Ops by Cooley LLP.

The Sponsors were advised by Momentum Cyber. Legal counsel was provided to the

Sponsors by Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Bad actors with millions of sophisticated bots at their disposal cause fraud at

the rate of tens of billions of dollars a year against companies across the

globe. These sophisticated bots live on consumer and enterprise devices,

sharing browsing history and habits with real humans, which makes them

especially difficult to detect. White Ops' multilayered detection methodology,

advanced algorithms, Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team[

https://www.whiteops.com/satori ], and massive scale can detect and prevent

these automated attacks at every level of sophistication, protecting customers'

sensitive data, reputation, compliance, bottom line and customer experience as

they grow their digital business. These capabilities enabled White Ops to play

a leading role in taking down 3ve [https://resources.whiteops.com/research/the-hunt-for-3ve ],

one of the largest fraud botnets to date, through collective protection and bringing

together the largest private sector collaboration in history, including the FBI, Google,

Facebook and many others in the industry. White Ops also recently uncovered

ICEBUCKET[ https://resources.whiteops.com/research/the-hunt-for-3ve ], the

largest and widest Connected TV (CTV) related fraud operation. In addition,

White Ops recently announced availability of its products in the AWS Cloud

Marketplace [https://www.whiteops.com/blog/bringing-white-ops-application-integrity-to-aws-cloud-marketplace ] and the Snowflake Data Marketplace[https://www.whiteops.com/blog/how-white-ops-leverages-snowflake-for-sharing-data-with-customers ] to provide customers

even more ways to access the Company's platform.

White Ops' Fraud Mitigation Platform solves top cybersecurity pain points

through its product offerings:

-Application Integrity [https://www.whiteops.com/products/application-integrity] -

Protects sites and applications from digital fraud and abuse including account

takeover attacks, new account fraud, fraudulent transactions and sensitive content

scraping, preventing costly fraud losses while preserving user privacy and frictionless

digital experiences.

-Marketing Integrity[ https://www.whiteops.com/products/marketing-integrity ] -

Protects digital marketing investments from fraud and abuse including paid

media, lead generation, and retargeting, preventing fraudulent traffic from

entering marketing platforms to ensure efficiency and boost ROI.

-Advertising Integrity[ https://www.whiteops.com/products/advertising-integrity ] -

Protects digital media and advertising from fraud and abuse within desktop,

mobile, and CTV environments for trusted inventory and human-only impressions

for more effective advertising.

To learn more about White Ops' perspective on how this investment further

advances their mission, read this blog post from CEO and co-founder Tamer

Hassan: https://www.whiteops.com/blog/our-next-chapter

About White Ops

White Ops is a cybersecurity company that collectively protects global

enterprises and internet platforms from digital fraud and abuse. We verify the

humanity of more than 10 trillion interactions per week protecting our

customers sensitive data, reputation, compliance, bottom line and customer

experience as they grow their digital business. To learn more visit

www.whiteops.com

About Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division

Founded in 1869, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment

banking, securities and investment management firm. Goldman Sachs Merchant

Banking Division (MBD) is the primary center for the firm's long-term principal

investing activity. MBD is one of the leading private capital investors in the

world with investments across private equity, infrastructure, private debt,

growth equity and real estate.

About ClearSky

ClearSky is a venture capital/growth equity firm that has been operating since

2012 with offices across the United States. ClearSky invests in companies that

offer transformative security solutions with a specific focus on cybersecurity,

critical infrastructure security, privacy, data governance and compliance. The

firm's world-class dedicated security team has a proven track record with over

60 years of security investing and practitioner experience. ClearSky also has a

highly distinguished advisory board consisting of diverse business leaders and

a Fortune 500 CISO Board of Advisors that is unmatched in the industry. For

more information, visit http://clear-sky.com/

About NightDragon

NightDragon is an investment firm focused on investing in growth and late-stage

companies within the cybersecurity industry. Its flexible model allows it to

lead or co-invest alongside leading venture capital and private equity firms in

the pursuit of driving growth and increasing shareholder value. NightDragon is

unique in providing deep operational expertise in cybersecurity gained by its

founders Dave DeWalt and Ken Gonzalez from years serving as senior executives

leading technology companies such as Documentum, EMC, Siebel Systems (Oracle),

McAfee, Mandiant, Avast, and FireEye. For more information, visit

www.NightDragon.com.

Contacts

White Ops

Sarah Acker

Senior Director, Marketing

sa@whiteops.com

Bud Communications for White Ops

Virginie Cosentino

Phone: +65-9161-5091

whiteops@budcomms.com

Goldman Sachs

Leslie Shribman

Goldman Sachs Media Relations

Leslie.shribman@gs.com

+1-212-902-5400

SOURCE: White Ops