Illumio Gets $125M in Series D Funding

Illumio received $125 million in round D funding. What does the company do – and whats it going to do with an extra $125 million?

Modern application systems are made up of many different parts. Hackers exploit this fact to find the weaknesses between pieces. Illumio is a security company that takes advantage of segmentation to strengthen an application networks security, and the company just received $125 million in series D funding to do just that.
In a press release on June 7, the company announced that the funding round closed, ...led by clients advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Existing venture investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, 8VC, Accel and Data Collective (DCVC) all participated, alongside new and other existing investors.
In a telephone interview with Security Now, Illumio chief commercial officer Alan Cohen said that the mix of investors is a testament to the growth of the security market and belief in the Illumio model for security. He pointed out that the investor group is led by Wall Street firms rather than Sand Hill Road firms -- a way of saying that financial firms rather than Silicon Valley venture funds are leading the way.
Cohen said that the company, while four and a half years old, has been out of stealth mode for two years and has seen consistent growth for those ten quarters. Weve mostly sold directly to large enterprises, Cohen said. He went on to explain about the sort of customer the company has found, saying, Its less about type of customer or vertical and more about mindset. Weve done many 7 figure deals, and last year did first 8 figure deal.
When asked about how Illumio will use the cash from the new round of funding, Cohen said that little will change -- and that there will be major change. We have a very strong balance sheet so certain things wont be different, he began, continuing, We have a big presence in Europe but teams only in the UK. Well build the channel, Were just getting started in the federal market. We have a large R&D function and well continue with that.
On one level well step on the gas, on the other well keep doing what weve been doing. There are directions in analytics and product development that wed like to put more resources against, Cohen said.
What is different about Illumio?
As to what it is, precisely, that Illumio does, Cohen began by describing it as Security by the paranoid, for the paranoid. As I listened to his description of the technology, the image I got was of the classic white list taken to an extraordinary degree.
Most users see white list as a list of email addresses that an email client will accept or web sites that your browser is allowed to navigate to. The key concept is that anything on the white list is allowed to happen; anything not on the white list is not allowed to execute.
In Illumios case, the companys software will set up a white list between segments of the application infrastructure. Each segment is an application, function, service, or block of functionality. At each interface, communication from and to specific, listed other segments is allowed. Everything else is forbidden. In Illumios philosophy, the more segments, the more checks on permissible traffic and the greater security provided.
In practice, the Illumio says that any malware or intrusion attempt will not be on the white list for communication, and so will not be allowed to move from segment to segment. Critically, even if an intrusion makes it past the perimeter security that a customer has in place, Illumio says that their software will prevent it from executing within the segmented application environment.
Everything is no until its yes, Cohen said, boiling the approach down to a simple form. Our emphasis is not on performance but on how components of services should communicate, he said, noting that the approach has found favor in particular markets. Companies that are highly regulated or have high pressure have moved toward these protection strategies.
— Curtis Franklin is the editor of
SecurityNow.com
. Follow him on Twitter
@kg4gwa
.

Last News
▸ IoT Devices on Average Have 25 Vulnerabilities ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ DHS-funded SWAMP scans code for bugs. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ Debunking Machine Learning in Security. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
Illumio Gets $125M in Series D Funding