Cloud-native network security startup Valtix Inc. said today it has closed on a $12.5 million strategic funding round led by Cisco Investments, Northgate Capital and The Syndicate Group.

The round brings Valtix’s total amount raised to more than $26.5 million, following an initial $14 million round in June 2019.

Valtix offers a multicloud network security platform that it says is designed to keep pace with the breakneck speed of cloud application development.

In a June 2019 interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, Valtix co-founder and then-Chief Executive Vishal Jain explained that most companies are moving to the cloud for the agility it provides, only to find that traditional security offerings cannot keep pace with that.

“We saw that network security has challenges in how to scale in the cloud,” Jain said at the time. “The main thing is that the cloud is sprawling … it’s a new logical parameter you’re seeing. Second thing we saw was that the apps are agile. And the third thing is security is always falling behind DevOps. So, we want to make network security to be scaled with apps.”

Valtix can keep pace with the development of new, cloud-native applications and automatically provide unified visibility and enforcement, the company said, by using a centralized cloud controller that automatically discovers all of a customer’s applications across the various clouds they’re using. It then automates security deployment and application defense.

Security is further backed by the Valtix cloud firewall. This approach, which Valtix likes to call “Discover, Deploy, Defend,” differs from traditional network security offerings that work by colocating security features.

Valtix’s platform became generally available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform last year, and has customers in the financial services, healthcare, retail and government sectors on all three platforms.

Late last year, Valtix reorganized its executive leadership team, hiring former Jupiter Networks Inc. and Big Switch Networks Inc. executive Douglas Murray as its CEO to replace Jain, who is now the company’s chief technology officer. Valtix also hired Anthony Narducci as its new vice president of worldwide sales and Joe Palazola as vice president of worldwide operations.

“Valtix has created the technology that will define the next decade of multicloud network security,” Murray said.

Valtix said it will use the new capital to accelerate a go-to-market strategy that’s designed to help it scale up its platform in 2021.

Here’s Jain’s interview in full:

Image: Valtix