KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 7): Last year saw an unprecedented US$21.8 billion in venture capital poured into cybersecurity companies globally, and investors set the record in style.

In a report Thursday (Jan 6), Crunchbase — which tracks trends, investments and news of global companies from start-ups to the Fortune 1000 — said aside from setting the one-year record, the fourth quarter set a new quarterly record.

Cybersecurity is defined by the industries of network security, cloud security and cybersecurity, according to Crunchbase data.

Crunchbase said the last quarter of 2021 saw a new all-time high of US$7.8 billion invested into an array of security providers.

It said the record quarter smashed the previous record of US$5.3 billion set just in the second quarter of 2021.

The quarter also saw more than 200 deals completed — more than any other quarter last year, it said.

Crunchbase said it was not just the number of deals that led to the record, but also the size of some of the funding rounds.

It said the fourth quarter included five of the top 10 funding deals in cybersecurity for the year.

In total, the quarter saw 11 rounds of US$200 million or more.

Crunchbase said 2020 saw US$8.9 billion invested in cybersecurity globally, adding that means the last three months of 2021 saw just about US$1 billion less invested than all of the entire previous year, which was a record year before 2021.

That is despite 568 fewer funding deals in those three months when compared to all of 2020.

The report said investors more than doubled down in 2021, increasing investment by about 145%.

It said even though deal volume was down, that didn’t matter when there were 27 funding rounds of US$200 million or more.

Not surprisingly, it said US-based cybersecurity firms led the way in funding, securing US$17.4 billion in venture dollars in 2021, compared to US$6.9 billion in 2020.

Israel-based companies came in second, raking in about US$1.8 billion compared to just more than US$1 billion in 2020.

The variety of areas in cybersecurity receiving funding seems to mirror many of the headlines about hacks and security breaches in the past year.

Companies no longer just have to secure an isolated on-premises network, but rather enterprises have to protect their workloads in the cloud as well as identify and authenticate employees in the new work-from-home and hybrid environment, while also having to protect networks and other critical tech infrastructure from attacks.