Spur Expands Analysis After $200M Perception Companions Buy

Perception Companions spent $200 million on an IP intelligence vendor led by the previous CEO of BeyondTrust to extend the scale of its analysis group.

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Turning into a part of Perception Companions will assist Orlando-area Spur Intelligence increase the analysis crew chargeable for figuring out VPNs, residential proxies and different types of anonymizing infrastructure utilized by attackers, stated CEO Kevin Hickey. He stated extra researchers will assist Spur determine malicious infrastructure sooner whereas bettering the standard of the intelligence delivered to clients.

“We constructed out the analysis crew,” Hickey stated. “We have greater than tripled the analysis crew. We constructed the advertising and marketing crew mainly from scratch and actually constructed out the gross sales crew as effectively. It is simply placing all of the items in place for development.”

Spur, based in 2017, employs 43 folks and hadn’t disclosed any outdoors funding previous to the Perception deal. The corporate has been led since August 2025 by Kevin Hickey, who turned CEO of privileged entry administration vendor BeyondTrust in Could 2012 and led it till its September 2018 merger with Bomgar, at which level Bomgar CEO Matt Dircks was tapped to steer the joint group.

What Drew Spur to Perception Companions

Hickey stated Spur nonetheless has vital runway forward of it, and that the funding by Perception will assist administration give attention to increasing income, strengthening its expertise and growing market share earlier than figuring out the corporate’s eventual exit technique. That flexibility might finally embody acquisitions, an IPO or a future strategic acquisition as soon as the enterprise reaches larger scale, Hickey stated.

“Somewhat than being purchased by a strategic and never having management of it, we figured Perception gave us the wherewithal to go after {the marketplace}, actually construct a robust, stable firm and maintain much more alternatives open down the street,” Hickey instructed ISMG.

Turning into a part of Perception offers Spur with entry to a broad community of safety firm CEOs going through comparable development challenges, Hickey stated. By way of Perception-hosted occasions and govt boards, Spur is ready to change finest practices on matters starting from gross sales execution and advertising and marketing technique to AI adoption, organizational scaling and operational challenges, Hickey stated.

“The extra information you could have in an area with the blinders open, the higher off it may be for you and your organization to construct from,” Hickey stated.

The funding from Perception will assist safety groups scale back false positives and offers CISOs higher context when investigating suspicious community exercise, Hickey stated. He stated Spur’s real-time session intelligence helps organizations decide whether or not exercise originates from authentic customers, bots or anonymized infrastructure earlier than malicious periods could cause harm.

“That is real-time info,” Hickey stated. “In case you wait days or perhaps weeks, people are already getting in and inflicting havoc inside your system.”

Why Adoption of IP Intelligence Is on the Rise

Hickey stated attackers are making larger use of VPNs, residential proxies and comparable applied sciences to disguise malicious exercise as authentic consumer site visitors. These strategies help credential assaults, account takeovers, automated abuse and different types of fraud which can be changing into harder for organizations to differentiate from regular buyer habits, he stated.

“The issue out there may be VPNs, residential proxies and different anonymizing infrastructure more and more allow malicious exercise to look authentic,” Hickey stated. “Our clients are in search of higher context round suspicious exercise, and that is what we’re supplying.”

Ready hours or days to determine malicious infrastructure offers attackers time to compromise accounts, transfer laterally or perform fraud, Hickey stated. Spur’s expertise is designed to ship intelligence in actual time so organizations could make extra knowledgeable belief selections throughout energetic consumer periods quite than after an assault has already occurred.

“Everyone on this firm takes this mission personally,” Hickey stated. “We consider we’re doing one thing nice within the market by supplying the very best info we are able to. That is what builds an incredible firm down the street.”

Analysis reveals that 94% of surveyed organizations have skilled safety incidents involving VPNs or residential proxies and that greater than half count on to judge IP intelligence options throughout the subsequent 12 months. He views these findings as proof that IP intelligence is evolving into an necessary standalone cybersecurity class and that Spur is effectively positioned to ascertain itself because the market chief.

“It is a comparatively new sector, and being the chief on this new sector and delivering content material to those people is completely vital,” Hickey stated. “The CISOs and fraud groups are waking as much as how necessary that is.”