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- VCs say these 30 cybersecurity startups will blow up in 2019
VCs say these 30 cybersecurity startups will blow up in 2019
- We asked several venture capital investors to tell us which cybersecurity startups will boom in 2019.
- We asked the investors to name the startups they're excited about, from the earliest-stage startups to those poised to make a big exit.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
More companies than ever are paying attention to cybersecurity - and not just in Silicon Valley.
From retail to manufacturing to banks to healthcare, cybersecurity is an important issue touching every type of company today. Cyberattacks may come from petty criminals, or from sophisticated nation-state operations. Major companies are turning to creative solutions to get employees to adopt two-factor authentication or sometimes launching cybersecurity products of their own - signs that these concerns are hitting the mainstream.
The rush of interest into the industry has led some experts to say there's too much noise and not enough clarity, especially in the startup scene. Still, the problems are real, and so too is the demand for solutions.
Some companies specialize developing software that protects networks, applications, or Internet of Things devices. Some specialize in specific sectors like healthcare. Others help software companies find flaws in their products with the help of ethical hackers.
We asked venture capital investors to name the cybersecurity software startups they think will boom in 2019. Those investors identified startups both in and outside their portfolios that they are particularly excited about this year.
What follows is the list cybersecurity startups that they believe are set for success in 2019. They range from fledgling companies that just launched, to well-established ones that could very well be heading for a huge exit.
Read more: VCs say these 19 startups for open-source software developers will blow up in 2019
The funding information is according to official announcements, as well as Crunchbase and Pitchbook, keepers of such records.
Altitude Networks
Startup: Altitude Networks
VC: Cack Wilhelm, partner at Accomplice VC
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $2 million
What it does: Altitude Networks provides tools to help companies clamp down on their data, so it doesn't find its way to the bad guys — protecting both against hack attack, and from absent-mindedly sending sensitive information to the wrong person.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Led by former-CISO at Twitter, the team is trying to solve enterprise security for enterprise SaaS applications, particularly the question of cloud data access and protection — who has shared which document with whom? This is a top concern for CISOs and not something cloud vendors solve."
Vectra
Startup: Vectra
VC: Aaron Jacobson, partner at New Enterprise Associates
Relationship: None
Total raised: $122.74 million
What it does: Vectra develops a system that detects network intrusion and suspicious activity, allowing companies to secure themselves against cyberattacks.
Why it's hot in 2019: "They run a bunch of AI and ML to detect breaches. They build a whole bunch of models. It's a killer team with really sophisticated and advanced technology."
Armorblox
Startup: Armorblox
VC: Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $16.5 million
What it does: Armorblox uses artificial intelligence to analyze and protect text-based communication from security threats.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Many companies claim to use AI to create better security solutions, often with more marketing bluster than technical substance. Armorblox is truly and deeply leveraging a branch of AI called Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to analyze and protect a company's most frequent form of communication - text. What's more, they can provide protection from phishing, data leakage, and other threats across all of the forms of text-based communication in a company - email, Slack, documents, texting, and more."
StackRox
Startup: StackRox
VC: Tomasz Tunguz
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $39 million
What it does: StackRox helps software developers make sure that the code they're writing is secure against hackers right from the very beginning.
Why it's hot in 2019: "As enterprises globally embrace DevOps, containers and Kubernetes to drive business innovation, StackRox is leading the industry in securing these environments."
Pindrop
Startup: Pindrop
VC: Victoria Treyger, general partner and managing director at Felicis Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $223.3 million
What it does: Pindrop develops technology that detects phone fraud and provides identity and security for phones and other devices.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Because their technology monitors calls to identify basic and more sophisticated fraud including social engineering. They are already working with the top Financial Institutions around the globe."
Namogoo
Startup: Namogoo
VC: David Blumberg, managing partner at Blumberg Capital
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $29 million
What it does: Namogoo detects and blocks unauthorized web ads, helping companies prevent customers from being hijacked and diverted to competitors.
Why it's hot in 2019: "The upshot is not only cyber security protection for the enterprise against Java injection attacks, but also yields improved customer experience, increased website conversion and demonstrably higher sales. "
Contrast Security
Startup: Contrast Security
VC: Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $122 million
What it does: Contrast Security helps developers build secure applications, no matter which platform they're running on.
Why it's hot in 2019: "One of the most exciting notions in cybersecurity is 'self-protecting applications.' Contrast Security helps developers build security directly into their applications, and this brings a number of benefits."
Sysdig
Startup: Sysdig
VC: Salil Deshpande, partner at Bain Capital Ventures
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $121.55 million
What it does: Sysdig offers security, monitoring and troubleshooting for software container environments.
Why it's hot in 2019: "There's a particular trend in security that you should be aware of — that security and monitoring are converging...And the startup that is doing this converging is Sysdig."
Very Good Security
Startup: Very Good Security
VC: Victoria Treyger, general partner and managing director at Felicis Ventures
Relationship: None
Total raised: $9.9 million
What it does: Very Good Security helps companies control and manage their data, and helps them stay compliant with regulatory needs.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Because they help small companies operate on sensitive data without having to deal with securing it or dealing with the liability."
Medigate
Startup: Medigate
VC: David Blumberg, managing partner at Blumberg Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $20.35 million
What it does: Medigate helps hospitals secure the medical devices on their internal networks.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Hospital networks struggle to maintain up-to-date security and integrity of their networks while staying in compliance with the FDA’s stringent certification mandates for software updates and patches. Medigate discovers, characterizes and protects a vast array of mission-critical devices using a three-tier firewall to deliver both compliance and security."
BioCatch
Startup: BioCatch
VC: Matthew Kinsella, managing director at Maverick Ventures
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $43.81 million
What it does: Instead of passwords, BioCatch continuously authenticates the user's identity by watching and analyzing how they use their device.
Why it's hot in 2019: "2018 was a year where behavioral biometrics started to really gain broad market acceptance and understanding and I believe 2019 will be an inflection point in the adoption curve, likely first in the banking and financial vertical and then moving beyond...BioCatch is the leader in behavioral biometrics."
Tortuga Logic
Startup: Tortuga Logic
VC: Lior Susan, founder and partner at Eclipse Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $2.81 million
What it does: Tortuga Logic develops products that detect and prevent security breaches in hardware.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Hardware security is a critical aspect of cybersecurity. As we put more trust in computers to drive our cars, fly or planes, and perform our surgeries, additional security measures are needed."
PerimeterX
Startup: PerimeterX
VC: Ariel Tseitlin, partner at Scale Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $78 million
What it does: PerimeterX develops behavior-based threat protection technology for the web, cloud, and mobile apps, warding against bots and criminals.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Recent attacks like 3ve and Mirai have been directly linked to massive botnets, and PerimeterX is the only solution available for protecting enterprises from the very automation attackers often use to detect vulnerabilities."
Obsidian Security
Startup: Obsidian Security
VCs: Asheem Chandna and Sarah Guo of Greylock Partners
Relationship: Both are investors and board members.
Total raised: $29.5 million
What it does: Obsidian helps companies guard their cloud computing infrastructure and applications against hackers.
Why it's hot in 2019: "As companies move to the cloud, identity is the new perimeter, but there’s no guard watching that perimeter today. Obsidian fills that hole, and does it in a way that is uniquely smart and scalable."
Aptible
Startup: Aptible
VC: Matthew Kinsella, managing director at Maverick Ventures
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $12.05 million
What it does: Aptible provides an all-in-one platform that helps companies stay in compliance with regulatory requirements and generally increase their data security.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Privacy is incredibly top of mind today, and companies are expected to do more and more to keep our data private. Regulations are being developed, most recently GDPR and soon the California Consumer Privacy Act, and companies need to stay in compliance with these regulations. This is difficult and highly complex, especially for small companies."
Styra
Startup: Styra
VC: Megan Holston-Alexander, senior associate at Unusual Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $13.5 million
What it does: Styra allows companies to secure cloud environments and applications, including those built on the popular Kubernetes open-source cloud platform.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Styra enables enterprises to define, enforce, and validate Kubernetes security...This will continue to be critical as more companies will need to create policy, validate rules, enforce them early and see results."
Cybellum
Startup: Cybellum
VC: David Blumberg, managing partner at Blumberg Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $2.5 million
What it does: Cybellum helps manufacturers assess the cybersecurity risk introduced by the components used to build cars.
Why it's hot in 2019: "As an ever larger percentage of automotive components are electronic, intelligent and run by software, the need for Cybellum’s binary software inspection security solution becomes more imperative and valuable for the auto industry. Cybellum saves money and saves lives."
Agari
Startup: Agari
VC: Ariel Tseitlin, partner at Scale Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $84.95 million
What it does: Agari uses artificial intelligence to prevent "spearphishing" and other malicious e-mail based attacks.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Enterprises are moving to the cloud faster than ever and email is leading the way....Agari Secure Email Cloud is the only cloud-native email security solution that offers protection from the most sophisticated email attacks, like business email compromise and spear phishing."
Expanse
Startup: Expanse
VC: Aaron Jacobson, partner at New Enterprise Associates
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $34.31 million
What it does: Expanse develops a platform that monitors the entire web for devices belonging to its corporate customers, and sounds the alarm if it finds a security vulnerability.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Expanse is doing well. We think of them as an Internet-wide port scanner. They can scan the entire web. The team from DARPA has done really well."
Exabeam
Startup: Exabeam
VC: Theresia Gouw, founding partner at Aspect Ventures, and Matt Howard, general partner at Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: Both are investors and board members.
Total raised: $118 million
What it does: Exabeam develops technology that helps security analysts detect attacks through machine learning that analyzes user behavior.
Why it's hot in 2019: “As cybersecurity attacks become more sophisticated and cyberwarfare becomes a reality, companies will need to laser in on how and why these events happen. Understanding and analyzing data is a critical piece to the cybersecurity puzzle, and companies will need a solution like Exabeam to get better insights into how and why cyberattacks happen, to better prevent in the future.”
Randori
Startup: Randori
VC: Cack Wilhelm, partner at Accomplice VC
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $9.75 million
What it does: Randori is an attack platform that provides "red-teaming" as a service — basically, staging simulated hack attacks to test for vulnerabilities and gaps in the security response.
Why it's hot in 2019: "[They're] trying to help companies gain an attacker's perspective and do so continuously. They have amassed a great team and they have early traction with a handful of strong customers."
Illusive Networks
Startup: Illusive Networks
VC: Aaron Jacobson, partner at New Enterprise Associates
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $30 million
What it does: Illusive Networks develops cybersecurity software that identifies attackers and provides false information to them to disrupt attacks, while alerting the customers.
Why it's hot in 2019: "It shows if someone on your network was nefarious and how to clean it up. They give visibility to a CISO. Now you can clean it all up to make it harder for someone to move around (on your network)."
Aporeto
Startup: Aporeto
VC: Matt Howard, managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $37.8 million
What it does: Aporeto develops software that secures applications on public, private, or hybrid clouds.
Why it's hot in 2019: “As technology becomes more agile and companies increase their rate of innovation, they are implementing microservices, containers and the cloud as part of their overall strategy. A critical piece to this technology adoption is ensuring that security is implemented through every step of the development process, and Aporeto’s approach to Zero Trust Security does just that.”
HackerOne
Startup: HackerOne
VC: Aaron Jacobson, partner at New Enterprise Associates
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $74 million
What it does: HackerOne helps companies pay bug bounties to ethical hackers who find flaws in their software and services.
Why it's hot in 2019: “Marten Mikos is a phenomenal CEO. They've got a great team. They're a market leader in crowdsourced penetration testing. They've been having a phenomenal year after year."
CyberGRX
Startup: CyberGRX
VC: Ariel Tseitlin, partner at Scale Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $59 million
What it does: CyberGRX helps companies conduct risk assessments on the software and services provided to them by outside vendors.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Third-party data breaches are on the rise and creating headline-grabbing headaches for companies like Target, Sony, Best Buy, and Delta Airlines. CyberGRX is developing a more thorough reconnaissance of third-party vendors and their accompanying risks by partnering with some of the world's most well-known enterprises to stop data breaches before they happen."
Cato Networks
Startup: Cato Networks
VC: Theresia Gouw, founding partner of Aspect Ventures
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $125 million
What it does: Cato Networks build security directly into cloud-based enterprise networks.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Enterprises of all sizes can now gain seamless access to advanced security capabilities, without scalability or geographical restrictions, and without the need to deploy and manage numerous security point products."
Awake Security
Startup: Awake Security
VCs: Asheem Chandna and Sarah Guo of Greylock Partners
Relationship: Both are investors, and Chandna is a board member.
Total raised: $31.2 million
What it does: Awake Security is a network traffic analysis company that detects incidents and provides information to the response team.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Every large business needs 'ground truth' for what happens in their environment, on prem or cloud. Network data is the best source of that truth, but it’s been traditionally hard and expensive to capture and store — and required experts to analyze. Awake has done the tough work to solve that."
Sqreen
Startup: Sqreen
VCs: Asheem Chandna and Sarah Guo of Greylock Partners
Relationship: Guo is an investor and a board member.
Total raised: $16.42 million
What it does: Sqreen develops a platform that manages application security for developers, operations, and security teams.
Why it's hot in 2019: "As every company becomes a software company, application security is increasingly important and traditional solutions are about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. Sqreen’s Application Security Management is developer friendly and agile, matching the way we architect and run modern apps."
CrowdStrike
Startup: CrowdStrike
VC: Aaron Jacobson, partner at New Enterprise Associates
Relationship: None
Total raised: $481.15 million
What it does: CrowdStrike develops a cybersecurity platform that prevents, detects, and responds to cyberattacks in real time using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Why it's hot in 2019: "CrowdStrike is doing really well. They will IPO at some point. They're a leader in terms of next generation endpoint companies. I think they'll be a large public company when they go out."
Menlo Security
Startup: Menlo Security
VC: Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst
Relationship: Investor and board member
Total raised: $85 million
What it does: Menlo Security protects users from malware attacks from the web, email and attachments by running applications in a secure cloud environment.
Why it's hot in 2019: "Menlo Security has taken a fascinating new 'isolation' approach to protect users from web-, email-, and attachment-borne attacks. Most cybersecurity energy goes into detecting bad things and then trying to prevent them from causing damage. Menlo Security takes a very different approach, assuming threats are going to happen, but keeping them from causing damage. It's rare to find a company that can 100% guarantee protection from a large class of attacks, but Menlo Security is actually able to do so."