Cloud access security broker Bitglass Inc. is in a confident mood after landing a $70 million round of financing.

The Series D round, led by new investor Quadrille Capital, with participation from existing investors FutureFund, New Enterprise Associates, Norwest and SingTel Innov8, brings its total amount raised to date to $150 million.

Cloud access security brokers provide software that sits between an enterprises’ on-premises infrastructure and the public cloud platforms they use. They act as a kind of gatekeeper, allowing organizations to extend their security policies beyond their own data centers. In the case of Bitglass, it does this by using a combination of application programming interfaces and proxies that allow it to provide greater control and visibility into how cloud apps are used.

With mobile devices, Bitglass attempts to control and secure enterprise data so they can be deployed without any kind of mobile app management or enterprise mobility management system in place. To do so, Bitglass takes advantage of whatever access and data protection controls those cloud apps provide through their APIs. In addition, it proxies traffic to and from cloud apps by integrating itself with the single sign-on process. This ensures that all application traffic from any device will transit via the proxy, regardless of the network used.

This allows Bitglass to perform several mobility management roles, including the prevention of data leaks. This is done by inspecting proxy traffic in order to apply encryption, rights management and other security policies to application data in transit.

Bitglass can also detect if a specific device is enrolled in a mobile device management program and apply different policies based on this. In addition, the data it collects can be used for more than just security purposes – for example, it can be used to monitor how often companies use different cloud applications in order to help them identify associated costs.

Bitglass Chief Executive Officer Nat Kausik told SiliconANGLE that the company’s security tools act as a kind of firewall for the cloud: “Traffic flows through us and we block threats and high-risk traffic,” he said.

The company bills itself as an alternative to enterprise mobility management services, which offer similar protections but with a focus on the secure management of mobile devices, rather than apps. Bitglass does, however, complement identity management services such as those provided by Okta Inc., which help to ensure that only authorized persons can login to company apps.

“Identity management products log the user in, but can’t log the user out or prevent the download of sensitive material to the kiosk, or block malware from being uploaded from the kiosk,” Kausik said. “Bitglass handles those things.”

Bitglass’ ability to attract so much funding highlights how enterprises are rethinking their security approaches as they transition to hybrid on-premises/cloud information technology environments, said Holger Mueller, a principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc.

“CASB vendors offer a new way to provide access and security and as such see a lot of interest from the investment community,” Mueller said. “It now comes back to Bitglass to capture more market share in the hybrid computing future.”

Image: Bitglass