SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Awake Security, the only advanced network traffic analysis company that delivers answers, not alerts, today announced it raised $36 million in Series C financing led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Energize Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures, as well as existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Greylock Partners. In addition, Karthik Subramanian, partner at Evolution Equity, has joined Asheem Chandna, Enrique Salem and Kevin Mandia on the company’s board of directors.
“Awake has assembled the best minds in networking, machine learning, data science, cybersecurity, and other disciplines to create something entirely new that fills a massive void in the security market,” said Rahul Kashyap, CEO of Awake Security. “By partnering with Evolution Equity with its deep U.S. and European network and cybersecurity expertise, and strategic investors Energize Ventures and Liberty Global, we’re building on that momentum to bring the Awake platform to even more organizations around the globe.”
The latest investment brings Awake’s total funding to nearly $80 million and will be used to propel expansion in areas including R&D, sales and marketing to meet the growing demand for the company’s advanced network traffic analysis platform. Organizations today face increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks from internal and external actors that blend with normal activity. The Awake platform has become a trusted and proven solution to quickly find and remediate these threats that would otherwise go undetected by traditional security solutions.
Awake has increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) by close to 700% and doubled its employee headcount over the past year. The company has displaced several established vendors, including those using AI-based techniques, and has established itself as a market leader for network detection and response, shadow IT, remote worker and contractor security, digital network packet forensics and threat hunting.
“The new network – from the data center to cloud workloads, IoT, and SaaS applications – is fundamental to the business success of organizations, especially as more and more of the workforce becomes distributed. Security solutions have just not been adequate at enabling this transformation – until Awake,” said Subramanian, whose experience includes years leading Cisco’s cybersecurity acquisition and investment team, where he assembled an extensive cybersecurity portfolio prior to joining Evolution Equity.
“We invested in Awake because we recognize its unique ability to help organizations fight modern threats. The traction and the third-party recognition Awake has received combined with our resources in and knowledge of the U.S. and European markets only bolsters our conviction,” continued Subramanian.
Since publicly launching, Awake has been a driving force for developing innovations that strengthen cybersecurity through advanced network traffic analysis. Unlike prior generations of security tools, this approach presents the entire scope of an attack along with investigation, digital forensics, and remediation options rather than leaving it to the human analyst to painstakingly pull this information together.
Participation from Energize and Liberty Global will help Awake expand into new markets well-positioned for its platform, such as critical infrastructure.
“With more assets and applications in a hybrid cloud environment, detecting malicious or threatening activity is becoming more complicated,” said Shane Hibbard, Director of Information Security at Invenergy. “Network traffic analysis can augment our cybersecurity resources and enable companies to respond appropriately.”
Supporting Quotes
“The challenges with protecting critical infrastructure are changing rapidly, and as the attack surface for digital threats expands, so have the blind spots for many organizations. Cybersecurity teams at power, utility, manufacturing, oil and gas, and other companies have been at a disadvantage, but Awake helps even the playing field. We’re partnering with Awake because we believe its platform can have a big impact in the industrial sector.” - Juan Muldoon, Partner, Energize Ventures
“Organizations in the media and telecom industries have a unique exposure to cyber-threats simply because of the nature of their networks. New and evolving threats require new solutions that are able to deal with them. The way Awake applies its proprietary analytics to every packet that crosses the network provides organizations with the visibility and actionable intelligence to fight new threats like they’ve never had before.” - Ankur Prakash, Partner, Liberty Global Ventures
About Evolution Equity Partners
Evolution Equity Partners, based in Palo Alto, New York City and Zurich, Switzerland, invests in fast growing technology companies in North America and Europe helping exceptional entrepreneurs develop market leading companies. The firm has a focus on Cyber-Security and Enterprise Software and its partners have been involved as founders, investors and as senior operating executives in leading software companies around the world. For more information, please visit us at www.evolutionequity.com or connect with us on Twitter @evolutionequity.
About Energize Ventures
Energize Ventures is a pre-growth venture capital firm located in Chicago. We partner with entrepreneurs to advance the next generation of energy and industry by investing in software and business model innovations. Since it was founded in 2016, Energize has made 12 investments spanning cybersecurity, mobility, data analytics, operational efficiency and distributed assets. For more information on Energize Ventures, please visit www.energize.vc.
About Liberty Global
Liberty Global (NASDAQ: LBTYA, LBTYB and LBTYK) is one of the world’s leading converged video, broadband and communications companies, with operations in six European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Telenet and UPC. We invest in the infrastructure and digital platforms that empower our customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Our substantial scale and commitment to innovation enable us to develop market-leading products delivered through next-generation networks that connect 11 million customers subscribing to 25 million TV, broadband internet and telephony services. We also serve 6 million mobile subscribers and offer WiFi service through millions of access points across our footprint.
In addition, Liberty Global owns 50% of VodafoneZiggo, a joint venture in the Netherlands with 4 million customers subscribing to 10 million fixed-line and 5 million mobile services, as well as significant investments in ITV, All3Media, ITI Neovision, LionsGate, the Formula E racing series and several regional sports networks.
About Awake Security
Awake Security is the only advanced network traffic analysis company that delivers answers, not alerts. By combining artificial intelligence with human expertise, Awake models and hunts for both insider and external attacker behaviors, while providing full forensics across traditional, IoT and cloud networks for autonomous triage and response. The platform is ranked #1 by EMA for time to value and was recognized as the #1 information security solution being evaluated by global 1000 companies in Enterprise Technology Research’s (ETR) Summer 2019 Emerging Technology Study.
Awake is backed by Greylock Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners, Energize Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures. Learn more at https://awakesecurity.com and follow Awake on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
