vArmour raises $41M to cut off malware propagation paths in the enterprise
The continuing rise in corporate data breaches is leading companies to expand their security efforts beyond preempting attacks to ensuring they’re prepared for the possibility of a successful hack. As a result, money once spent on traditional network protection software is now going to startups like vArmour Inc., which just raised $41 million in new funding to keep the train rolling.
Since joining the fray in 2011, the outfit claims to have seen hundreds of banks, telcos and other large enterprises sign up for its microsegmentation platform. The vArmour Distributed Security System (DSS) limits the scope of breaches by splitting an organization’s workloads into groups that are isolated from one another at the software level. Databases, for instance, can only be accessed by the applications that actively use them, even if they’re on the same physical infrastructure as processes from a different group. And the access restrictions are adjusted automatically when a workload is reconfigured or moved, which ensures no security gaps are created as a company’s environment changes over time.
Similar value propositions are offered by several other security vendors, most notably Illumio Inc., another venture-backed startup that has raised over $150 million in funding. But while it may have a smaller war chest, vAmour boasts a much more expansive feature set. Its platform’s core microsegmentation functionality is paired with incident response features that enable administrators to quickly take action when a breach is detected.
DSS provides the ability to trace a compromise back to the entry point, understand the nature of the attack and correlate it with the other data collected by the software to find the best way of plugging the hole. The insights produced through the analysis can then be used to adjust the platform’s threat prevention algorithms, which are able to automatically block threats when they know what to look for.
The capital from today’s round will used to try and broaden the adoption of the software in international markets. The lion’s share of the cash was contributed by Redline Capital, while the rest came from Australian telecommunications giant Telstra Corp. Ltd and a number of unnamed “strategic investors.”
Image via Pixabay
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