AlienVault is a San Mateo-based security startup that made a major announcement today on their $26.5 million Series D funding led by GGV Capital.  Total funding is now about $61 million, and this announcement includes strong participation from new and existing investors.

AlienVault is a powerful crowd-source threat intelligence and threat management platform called Unified Security Management (USM).  The offering is focused on cutting edge security visibility through flexible integration into the enterprise environment.  Additionally, AlienVault’s products are designed for customers that operate with a limited staff both in numbers and skill, as it is an ongoing enterprise challenge to find and retain personnel and budget to implement and maintain security systems.  USM is heavy on built-in security controls and integration into its AlienVault Labs database.  That database updates threats and vulnerabilities on an aggregated basis from throughout AlienVault’s extensive user base.  The company’s tool suite is called Open Source Security Information Management (OSSIM) and it has been downloaded over 250,000 times by users in 170 countries.   Over 9,500 OSSIM users and AlienVault customers actively share threat intelligence information through the company’s Open Threat Exchange system.   Funding will go to expand that Open Threat Exchange system internationally, as demand for increased global scale has been on the rise.

GGV Capital’s Greg Solomon will be joining the board as director at AlienVault and he made the following statements on that move:

We jumped at the opportunity to lead this financing round in AlienVault.  Our enthusiasm for the company and opportunity is driven by several key factors:

• Quality of Team.  AlienVault is run by Barmak Meftah, the former Chief Product Officer of Fortify Software.  Barmak has assembled a strong and experienced team of technology, sales and marketing executives from companies such as Fortify and Solar Winds.  At GGV Capital, our best investments have been driven by great leaders who’ve assembled top notch teams such as Lars Dalgaard at Successfactors, Jack Ma at Alibaba and Mike Lazerow at Buddy Media.  We believe Barmak and his team possess similar capabilities and we’re grateful they selected GGV as the lead financing partner in this round from a long list of interested funds.
• Enormity of the Opportunity.  Hardly a day goes by these days without news of a major IT security breach.  These attacks are no longer being carried out by disconnected, thrill-seeking, young hackers but are now the province of state-sponsored cyber warfare and organized crime, where large losses of IP and market value hang in the balance.  Companies of all sizes now recognize they must protect themselves.  This has created lots of tailwind for AlienVault with large, mid-size and smaller businesses.
• Product Approach & Business Model.  While products that block and prevent routine attacks, such as firewalls and anti-virus software, have already been brought together under unified platforms to make them simple and affordable, until now there hasn’t been a solution that unifies the tools necessary to provide comprehensive threat detection and security visibility.  With its Unified Security Management (USM) platform, AlienVault is the first company that has built a platform that federates security information from all parts of a network to identify and thwart attacks.  AlienVault uses the very same tools that hackers use to perpetrate attacks, turning these tools around to create secure environments and enabling customers to fight hackers proactively rather than the typical reactive model.  AlienVault also takes advantage of real time intelligence gathered from the thousands of users of its open source products, and has created the largest repository of up-to-date threat intelligence information.  As the velocity of exploits and vulnerabilities grow with network complexity, this repository has become indispensible to AlienVault’s growing customer base.

With cyber security becoming an increasingly prevalent topic, the fact that we hear so much about breaches and data loss stories often at massive scale, it’s little wonder that a nimble, easy to use platform would emerge to answer the call.  AlienVault is an easy-entry product that is quickly implemented in organizations at every level.  Add to that the rapid knowledge or rather – threat intelligence that is gathered through the community, it all adds up to a threat management solution that has tremendous value to any organization, but especially to those that are in need of advanced protection.  With the company on such a rapid growth trajectory, the enormous opportunity in the market and this funding news in hand, it is fair to project that this synergy of successes will continue.