NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Red Balloon Security, a world leader in embedded device security, today announced it has secured $21.9 million in Series A funding.
Bain Capital Ventures led the round, with additional investment from Greycroft, American Family Ventures and Abstract Ventures. This latest round of funding brings the company’s total financing to $23.5 million.
Red Balloon Security will use the investment to expand business operations as it deploys its cutting-edge embedded systems security technology, Symbiote Defense, across a wide range of industries. Symbiote Defense is already used by leading companies such as HP, Inc.
“Symbiote Defense is a critically important technology for today’s businesses because it is able to prevent malware and other cyber attacks from hijacking, disrupting or corrupting any embedded device,” said Ang Cui, PhD, founder and CEO of Red Balloon Security. “This technology has considerable commercial potential because it is highly effective within any type of embedded device environment, from consumer electronics to factories, connected cars and even power plants. Thanks to the strong support of our investors, we will now be able to make this advanced technology more widely available to commercial users across all major industries.”
“With the massive proliferation of connected devices, the demand for robust cybersecurity solutions is only going to increase,” said Enrique Salem, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. “The company’s unique product offering has already demonstrated its efficacy and reliability for a variety of critical and consumer applications. We believe this combination of a superior product and a deeply technical team will allow Red Balloon Security to capitalize on a multi-billion dollar market.”
“Red Balloon Security is positioned to become the world’s leading endpoint security provider for all embedded devices. We are excited to work with Enrique and the Bain Capital Ventures team because of their considerable experience in the cybersecurity sector,” said Cui. “The threats to connected embedded devices are growing. Our partnership with Enrique and Bain Capital Ventures will amplify Red Balloon Security’s ability to deliver the most advanced embedded security technologies that the industry has ever seen to the world’s most important and vulnerable embedded devices.”
Red Balloon Security’s Symbiote Defense technology is the world’s most advanced embedded security solution. It enables customers to detect, mitigate and recover from a wide range of emerging threats. It defends devices without requiring changes to source code or hardware design, all without impacting the functionality or performance of the device. Symbiote has demonstrated the ability to defend against both n-day and zero-day attacks on embedded devices, even if the attacker has succeeded in bypassing traditional cybersecurity measures. This makes Red Balloon Security’s technology highly effective as both a first and last line of defense for protecting the billions of devices that make up our connected world.
Symbiote Defense was developed over a 10-year process and through the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T). The technology has operated for more than 15 billion continuous hours without a single failure, protecting millions of endpoints around the world. Red Balloon Security received the Department of Homeland Security’s “Crossing the Valley of Death” award in July 2017 and Symbiote was named one of “The 9 most Important Security Innovations of the Year” in Popular Science’s 2016 “Best of What’s New” awards.
About Red Balloon Security
Red Balloon Security (www.redballoonsecurity.com) is a leading security provider and research firm for embedded devices across all industries. Founded in 2011 by Dr. Ang Cui, the company’s core technology, Symbiote Defense, was originally developed within Columbia University’s Intrusion Detection Systems Lab. Red Balloon Security’s pioneering R&D is led by a team of world-class academic researchers and developers who have published seminal research papers in the fields of embedded security and intrusion detection, led US Department of Defense funded research activities, ethically disclosed vulnerabilities within hundreds of millions of ubiquitous embedded devices and worked as embedded security researchers within various intelligence agencies.
About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures partners with disruptive founders to accelerate their ideas to market. The firm invests from seed to growth in enterprise software, infrastructure software and industries being transformed by data. Bain Capital Ventures has helped launch and commercialize 200-plus companies since 2000, including investments in DocuSign, Jet.com, Kiva Systems, LinkedIn, Rapid7, SurveyMonkey, Taleo and TellApart. Bain Capital Ventures has approximately $3.6 billion of assets under management with offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Follow the firm via LinkedIn or Twitter.
