Acronis Inc., the maker of cybersecurity protection products that combine backup features with malware prevention technology, has secured $250 million in new funding at a valuation north of $2.5 billion.

CVC Capital Partners led the round, which was announced today.

Acronis is based in Switzerland and counts all the firms on the Fortune 1000 list as customers. Somewhat unusually for an enterprise software supplier, the company has also a sizable consumer business. It sells an antivirus product with a built-in file backup tool that has more than 5 million users worldwide.

The company’s business products have the same basic value proposition: They combine data protection and breach prevention features in a single offering. Acronis says that its one-stop-shop approach offers several advantages over the traditional practice of using separate data protection and breach prevention tools. There are fewer software licenses to keep track of, the company says, because companies only need to install one product instead of several. It argues that tasks such as downloading patches are easier to perform as well. 

Convenience is not the only area where Acronis claims to have an edge over rivals. Ransomware protection is another. In many cases, ransomware attacks attempt to encrypt not only a company’s main data repositories but also its backups so as to make files harder to recover. Acronis says that, because its products’ malware prevention features are integrated with their backup functions, they’re better equipped to mitigate such attempts than traditional offerings.

Acronis has two main products for the business market: One targets enterprises and the other is aimed at managed service providers. Those managed service providers use Acronis’ software to secure and back up the data of about a half-million small to midsized businesses, the company says.

Acronis’ managed service provider ecosystem is at the center of the growth initiative it plans to launch using the new $250 million round. The company intends to supply partners with more sales and marketing assistance following the investment, as well as offer them access to enhanced training resources.  

In parallel, Acronis said, it will continue building out its product portfolio. The company will use the new funding to speed up engineering plans by recruiting more engineers to its global network of research and development centers.

The approach of combining features for managing business files with tools for securing them is gaining traction in other parts of the enterprise technology market well. Last year, Box Inc. rolled out automated malware detection to its popular file-sharing platform. More recently, data protection giant Veeam Inc. introduced a feature for creating so-called immutable backups of Kubernetes environments that can’t be encrypted by ransomware.

Both the data protection and cybersecurity markets have been seeing significant startup funding activity thanks to their rapid growth. Acronis, owing to the fact that it maintains a presence in both segments, has found itself in a strong position to benefit from the investor interest. The $250 million round announced today comes less than two years after the company raised $147 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Image: Acronis