Business intelligence startup Sisense hit by cyber attack
Business intelligence startup Sisense hit by cyber attack
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) urged Sisense's customers to reset passwords and other credentials that may have been exposed to or used to access Sisense's services and to report any suspicious activity
Sisense has been hit by a data compromise, the U.S. cybersecurity watchdog agency said in an alert on Thursday.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) urged Sisense's customers to reset passwords and other credentials that may have been exposed to or used to access Sisense's services and to report any suspicious activity.
“CISA is taking an active role in collaborating with private industry partners to respond to this incident, especially as it relates to impacted critical infrastructure sector organizations,” CISA said in a statement.
Details of the compromise, or how exactly it affected Sisense, were not disclosed in the agency's online alert.
Sisense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
News of the breach was first reported by journalist Brian Krebs, who said in a post to Mastodon, that "many millions of credentials" had been affected.
A cyber attack is the last thing Sisense needed after struggling on the business side over the past year. Six months after laying off 100 employees, Sisense embarked on another round of layoffs in January of this year, parting ways with around 60 employees, accounting for approximately 13% of its remaining workforce.
Sisense employed as many as 800 people in 2022, but following the latest round of cutbacks remained with a team of around just 400 employees.
The layoffs were another shock in a long series of developments at Sisense that began with the departure of senior executives in 2022, followed by relatively small-scale layoffs and a halt in recruitment.
In 2022, Sisense reduced its workforce from 800 employees to 600 employees, and many of the company's early employees left. Alongside the downsizing, Sisense changed its business focus several times, shifting from developing analytics tools for businesses to focusing solely on large enterprises, and then deciding to concentrate on integrating analytics tools into other corporate software. At the end of April of last year, the company announced the appointment of Ariel Katz as CEO in place of Amir Orad, who shifted to the role of Chairman. Katz had joined a year earlier as Chief Products and Technology Officer and General Manager of Israel.
Sisense, which reported reaching an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $150 million last year, is an established company that was founded back in 2004. It reached a valuation of a billion dollars in 2019 with a $100 million funding round led by Insight Partners. Aside from Insight, the main investors in Sisense are renowned venture capital funds such as Bessemer Ventures Partners, Battery Ventures, and Access.
