RALEIGH – Security Journey, a Raleigh-based provider of an educational platform for data and cyber security trainings, has been acquired by the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-headquartered HackEDU.
To some, this was not a surprise.
That includes Chris Romeo, the founder and CEO of Security Journey, who said in a blog post published yesterday on the company’s website that it was always his plan to sell the company.
“The business was never a lifestyle for me,” wrote Romeo. “The goal was an acquisition. However, I didn’t think it would happen this quickly.”
Romeo founded the company in 2016 after departing from a role at Cisco, and was joined in the new startup venture by his wife, Deb, the company’s chief financial officer.
By 2019, said Romeo, the company was experiencing growth, and despite a disruption in April 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company continued to grow.
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How the deal happened
“In January 2022, an acquirer came knocking,” said Romeo, adding that he’d seen many requests in the prior years. “This one caught my attention because it was not a form letter.”
Next, conversations began.
“We took some meetings, negotiated, and ended up with an offer to sell Security Journey,” said Romeo. “It wasn’t just any offer. It was an offer to meld together the two top security education platforms to form a super training company poised to dominate the industry.”
The vision includes what HackEDU CEO Joe Ferrara called a “broad and deep training library to support multi-year programs,” in a blog post published on HackEDU’s website.
“Having listened to buyers of security training for the past decade, I am confident that when we achieve our vision, our combined organization will deliver everything you need to create a security-first culture across your entire software development lifecycle,” wrote Ferrara.
The combined company expects to see continuing expansion and adoption of development, security, and operations, or DevSecOps, including the integration of these functions by companies. Raleigh-headquartered RedHat has said that companies that streamline their DevSecOps processes to allow software development to focus on business value will become increasingly important as edge deployments expand, and offers products and services to clients to assist.
A statement jointly released by the company notes that there are “more than a dozen open positions available for employees who wish to work remotely, in Pittsburgh, PA or Raleigh, NC.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
