ARM and cybersecurity firm Cybereason, both backed by SoftBank, partner to help secure IoT home devices like connected lightbulbs and thermostats
SoftBank-backed Arm and Cybereason are teaming up to protect some of the cyberworld's most vulnerable targets Tweets: @wsj and @mpatrickshea Tweets: @wsj : Unlike PCs or smartphones, connected “things” don't generally have antivirus software and users often aren't asked to update logins and passwords http://www.wsj.com/... Patrick Shea / @mpatrickshea : Huge news: @cybereason is partnering with @arm to protect IOT devices. 70% of tech products in the world are powered by Arm —> New Cyberdefenses Planned for Connected Devices http://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Context & Ripple Effects
This partnership is a SoftBank portfolio play coming together: the firm first backed Cybereason with a $50M investment in 2015, then doubled down with $100M in 2017 around its behavioral-analytics threat detection. Now two of its holdings are combining forces — Arm, whose chips power the vast majority of tech products per the WSJ's own reporting, and Cybereason — to attack the gap where connected lightbulbs and thermostats ship with no antivirus and no update prompts.
The move lands in a market where dedicated IoT-security specialists were already raising serious capital: Armis had just closed a $30M Series B months before this announcement, positioning the category as one investors treat as structural rather than niche.
First-order effects
- Device makers building on Arm silicon gain a built-in security path for products that today ship unprotected, while Cybereason extends its detection business from enterprise networks into the consumer IoT stack.
Second-order effects
- Independent IoT-security vendors face a rival with distribution at the chip level — Armis answered with a $65M Series C led by Sequoia within six months, signaling that incumbents' entry raises rather than lowers the funding bar in the category.
Third-order effects
- If chip-embedded defense becomes the default, standalone IoT security consolidates into platforms: Armis's path from venture backing to an acquisition by Insight Partners at a $1.1B valuation shows where specialist vendors end up once the silicon owners move in.
The trend: IoT security is shifting from bolt-on endpoint software toward defenses embedded at the silicon level, with SoftBank assembling the pieces and specialists consolidating through large funding rounds and acquisitions.