UPDATED 21:17 EDT / MARCH 22 2021

SECURITY

Wiz raises $130M, Axis Security $50M as COVID-19 drives more cybersecurity funding

Venture capital money continues to flow into the cybersecurity sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as Wiz Inc. and Axis Security today said they raised $130 million and $50 million, respectively.

Wiz did not specifically name the investors in its Series B round but noted that previous investors included Sequoia, Index and Cyberstarts. The round was raised on a valuation of $1.7 billion, giving Wiz unicorn status, a remarkable achievement given that it only came out of stealth mode with the announcement of $100 million in funding in December and is barely over a year old.

The company was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica and Roy Reznik, former leads of Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group and the founding team of Adallo Inc., a cybersecurity startup acquired by Microsoft for $320 million in 2015. Wiz is developing a cloud security product designed to help companies secure their cloud infrastructure.

Wiz’s technology builds an up-to-date representation of a company’s cloud setup across network, identity, compute, application, vulnerabilities and secrets, presenting all the information in one place, with an aim to deliver quicker insights and informed decision-making. Support is available for Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Kubernetes application programming interfaces with the promise of turnkey setup with zero friction.

Notable Wiz customers include DocuSign Inc., The Home Depot Inc., AON plc, United Airlines Inc., Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co and Mars Inc.. The new funding will be used by Wiz to hire more people.

Axis Security’s Series C round was led by Spark Capital and included Canaan Partners, Ten Eleven Ventures and Cyberstarts. It comes after the company last raised $32 million in September.

Founded in 2018 with a launch out of stealth mode in March 2020, Axis Security offers the Axis Application Access Cloud, an “agentless” model that it says delivers the easiest and safest way to connect users on any device in minutes to private apps without touching the network or the applications.

Designed to solve the issue of implicitly open network access, the company’s service can deploy with no agent or network changes required. Adaptive Access Technology powering Axis Security’s service continuously manages all user activity while enforcing policy based on user behavior analytics. It also offers application isolation technology that prevents direct user access to eliminate attack surfaces.

Notable Axis Security customers include Nvidia Corp., Cardenas Makrets LLC, Armis Inc., SkySail RX, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and Cellcom.

“Secure remote access for employees and third parties is a major challenge and top priority,” Diego Souza, Axis Security’s global chief information security officer, said in a statement. “Cloud-based, zero-trust network access solutions offer a better path forward in the work-from-anywhere world we now operate in.”

Wiz has raised $230 million to date, while Axis Security has raised $100 million.

Image: DataCorp Technology Ltd/Flickr

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