While other enterprise search providers make their living by helping organizations navigate internal records or find information about the competition, Qadium Inc. has its crawlers set on an entirely different target: Connected devices. The startup is assembling an index of all the Internet-connected endpoints on the planet in a grandiose effort that received a $20 million boost from investors this week.

The lion’s share of the cash came from Scott Sandell, a general manager at venture capital giant New Enterprise Associates, while the remainder was divided between Peter Thiel and a group of existing backers. Qadium will use the new funds to expand adoption of its service, which is geared mainly towards companies looking to improve their network security. Expander, as it’s called, can pick up on anything from a malfunctioning firewall in a remote branch office to employee-owned phones that are being used somewhere they’re not supposed to.

Effectively distinguishing such vulnerable endpoints from among the billions of others out there is all but impossible to do manually, an issue that is driving a lot of interest in Qadium and its technology. Despite the fact that it’s been in stealth mode up until a few days ago, the startup has already landed deals with US Cyber Command, the Navy and a number of other government agencies, according to Forbes. Expander is also starting to make inroads in the private sector, where it’s currently used by a number of healthcare firms, consultancies and an unnamed “large financial institution” from New York. The latter client win perhaps the least surprisingly of the bunch.

Banks are investing heavily to avoid breaches like the kind that struck JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2014, when hackers managed to pilfer personal data about 83 million households and businesses through a single misconfigured server. Preventing even one such incident can easily pay back the $1 million annual fee that Qadium reportedly charges for Expander, especially when taking into the long-term damage that attacks often cause to company’s’ reputation. This week’s funding should go a long way towards raising awareness of the service’s usefulness in the security community.

Image via Pixabay