Security operations startup Arctic Wolf Networks Inc. has raised an additional $150 million in a late-stage funding round that takes its value to $4.3 billion.

Viking Global Investors and Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl Capital, led today’s Series F round, together with participation from other existing investors.

Arctic Wolf sells a cloud-native managed detection and response platform that’s used by enterprise customers to detect potential threats within their information technology networks and systems. The platform is designed to help customers overcome the skills shortage in the cybersecurity industry.

It works by scanning event data from the customer’s network and enriching it with contextual details such as intelligence on hacking campaigns. It then analyzes this data using machine learning to try to identify any threats.

The platform is mixed with professional services in the form of Arctic Wolf’s Concierge Security team. If it spots a threat in a customer’s network, this team will inform them of exactly what’s happening and assist with their response. In addition, Arctic Wolf’s services extend to helping customers find weak points in their information technology infrastructure and suggesting ways to plug these gaps.

Arctic Wolf recently expanded into the growing market for security awareness and training with a new Managed Security Awareness offering launched at the RSA Conference in May. That product combines fully managed training, phishing simulation and account takeover monitoring into a service that enables enterprises to create their own security awareness and training programs.

When it was put to him that his company might also struggle with the cybersecurity industry’s skills shortage, Arctic Wolf Chief Executive Brian NeSmith admitted to SiliconANGLE that no one is completely immune to this problem. However, he said Arctic Wolf’s technology based approach, which sees its cloud-native platform act as a “secret sauce” that enables its expert teams to serve multiple customers at scale, helps to mitigate this danger.

“Unlike traditional security services we own our technology stack and it enables us to detect, respond, and mitigate attacks at the speed of the cloud, while also equipping our Concierge experts with speed, scale, and efficiencies,” he explained. “We haven’t been affected by the skills shortage so far due to our technology-backed approach.”

The company said it is seeing big demand for its security operations technology and services. It said its business doubled in terms of both revenue and headcount over the past year and that it now counts more than 3,000 customers using its platform. In addition, in the past year it saw 438% year-over-year annual recurring revenue growth with large enterprise customers, plus a 148% increase in the security events processed on its platform.

Arctic Wolf has seen equally big backing from investors too. Today’s round follows a $200 million raise in October that, in turn, came just months after the company secured $60 million in March 2020.

NeSmith told SiliconANGLE that Arctic Wolf wasn’t raising more money because it had already used that cash, but rather to support the explosive growth it has seen. “As we continue to expand our business geographically and by gaining additional traction in the enterprise space, we will continue to invest in our cloud-native platform to bring to market leading technology,” he said.

NeSmith wouldn’t reveal exactly what market-leading technology the company has in store, but said the plan is to ensure Arctic Wolf remains at the cutting edge of innovation in areas such as cybersecurity incident response, forensics, user training and awareness and threat intelligent. “Our roadmap will continue to cover and advance all areas of security operations that end cyber risks,” he said.

Image: Arctic Wolf