Cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox laid off about 50 employees — or 13% of its workforce — on Tuesday, the company told TechCrunch.
The layoffs come just days after the company threw a party At the RSA Cybersecurity Conference, where the company apparently worked Branded drinks It’s called “internet soup”. The official account of Bishop Fox on Twitter He said Last week, the company will be holding “other events in Vegas later this year,” referring to the Black Hat and Def Con security conferences that are held every year in Las Vegas.
Bishop Fox spokesperson Kevin Koch said in an email that the company had event space at RSA “booked several months in advance and secured primarily for the purposes of a full day’s live broadcast (the opposite of what we did for DefCon), which served as a forum for engagement and knowledge sharing with the community.” This was followed by a reception for the participants, the team, industry friends and RSA attendees.”
The company declined to say how much it spent on the RSA. Koch confirmed that the company had about 400 employees before yesterday’s layoffs.
We have made these changes proactively in response to the global economic situation and the opportunities we have identified to make our business more efficient. While demand for our solutions remains strong and our business stable, we cannot ignore the market uncertainty and investment trends in this very different global economy,” Bishop Fox CEO Vinny Liu said in a statement sent to TechCrunch. “Bishop Fox continues to enjoy In good health, we remain optimistic about our growth and our investments in technology over the coming quarters and years. Our company’s cash reserves (including the increase in Series B), together with this restructuring, allow us to maintain a strong financial position that enables scale, innovation and, of course, the delivery of the high-quality solutions our customers have come to expect.”
Last year, Bishop Fox raised a total of $129 million in a Series B round from several investors, including WestCap, NextEquity Partners, and Rockpool Capital.
And last week, the company announced in RSA that it is expanding into the UK with an “initial focus on organizations in Northern Europe.” In the announcement, the company also said it had achieved “company growth of 40% year-over-year.”
Employees who said they lost their jobs on Twitter described the layoffs as “unexpected.” Someone said it was “due to internal restructuring”.
In September 2022, the company’s Vice President of Customer Success Acquisition Christy Tyrrell said the company was “hiring across the board,” and the company’s official LinkedIn account wrote in a post that it was “hiring across several different teams at the Fox Den, from pentesting to technical editing to sales “.
Bishop Fox’s layoffs come as the entire technology sector suffers from the economic downturn. However, some have considered cyber security to be a safer sector. Last year, a report from (ISC)², a nonprofit association of “information security leaders,” predicted that cybersecurity teams “will be the least affected by staff cuts, as organizations anticipate an increase in cyberthreats in 2023.”
The report was based on a survey of 1,000 CEOs. At the time, (ISC) CEO Clare Russo said that “the importance placed on cybersecurity professionals, even in turbulent economic times, indicates that senior executives recognize the critical need for a strong cybersecurity team now more than ever.”
Do you have more information about layoffs at Bishop Fox? Or in another cyber security company? You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, via Wickr, Telegram and Wirelorenzofb, or email lorenzo@techcrunch.com. You can also contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.