Investors Pour Money Into Next-Generation Security Companies

The simple fact is that the traditional security model is broken. The good news is that there are plenty of hungry security startups out there with innovative solutions to transform the way we secure and protect our networks and data. Billions of dollars poured in to the security industry last year as investors scramble to find a winner.

The security industry has started to go through a transformation. The transformation is part evolution and part maturity. Exploits and attack techniques advance rapidly and a quick look at the headlines on any given week demonstrates that traditional network and endpoint security solutions are proving inadequate. The companies that form the new breed of security are bringing unique and innovative approaches to the problem rather than just tweaking the same old broken security model.

If you follow the money, it seems investors also see the proverbial writing on the wall and are actively looking for the “next big thing”. Companies like HackerOne, Cylance, and Venafi have benefited from a spike in security industry investments. Code42 and Tenable even made the CB Insights list as the top-funded startups for their respective states. Today, Vera announced that it has closed a $17 million round of Series B financing—bringing its total to over $31 million in funding.

A post from CSO in August of 2015 explained, “CB Insights reported that in the first half of 2015, venture firms invested $1.2 billion into cybersecurity startups. Yup, you read it correctly – one point two billion in just the first six months of 2015.”

“Vera is bridging a critical security gap by changing the way enterprises think about securing their data and we’re excited to be part of this opportunity,” said Stefan Dyckerhoff, Managing Director at investor Sutter Hill Ventures. “We’re turning a pivotal corner where businesses across every industry are re-evaluating their cybersecurity strategies across multiple dimensions in the wake of an increasingly dynamic and damaging threat environment. It’s become very clear that status quo approaches to security have grown tired and ineffective–it’s time for a new guard to emerge.”

Vera is a good example of the shift away from the traditional security model. Most security solutions attempt to protect assets and data by blocking access at the network perimeter and/or detecting known threats and exploits. The scourge of data breaches is evidence that the old way doesn’t work. Vera has an innovative approach to track and secure data no matter where it travels—across all users, devices, applications, and platforms. Rather than seeking to identify and prevent all possible compromises of the device or computer system, Vera functions to secure what matters—the data—even if an attacker gains access to the system or application it resides on.

See the complete story on Forbes: New Breed Of Startups Aims To Transform Security.