Container and Kubernetes threat detection startup StackRox Inc. announced today it has raised $26.5 million in new funding to expand in key geographies and support research and development efforts.

The round was led by Menlo Ventures and included Highland Capital Partners, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures. As part of the deal, Menlo Ventures partner Venky Ganesan has joined the StackRox board.

Founded in 2014, StackRox sells a cloud-based platform that offers continuous advanced threat detection for cloud-native applications, containers, serverless computing and Kubernetes. Designed to help enterprises secure their containers and Kubernetes environments at scale, StockRox’s platform assists users in platform detection and response to security threats, enabling security and DevOps teams to enforce their security and compliance policies across the entire container lifecycle from building to deploying to runtime.

Features include the ability to automatically correlate and detect classes of security threat behavior, monitor events over time and to apply an “Adversarial Intent Model” to alert information technology staff of potential threats across the attack lifecycle.

Notable StackRox customers include Sumo Logic Inc., Unity Software Inc., Ask Media Group, Zendesk Inc., Reddit Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Splunk Inc.

Along with the funding announcement, StackRox also revealed that it had achieved more than 240% revenue growth in the first half of the year, though it didn’t provide more specific numbers. The rise in revenue was driven by companies accelerating their digital transformation initiatives and adopting cloud-native technologies and DevSecOps, in part driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

StackRox’s Kubernetes-native architecture helps companies adapting to changing business conditions and secure their cloud-native applications as they support remote work and embrace DevSecOps, the company said.

“Companies are adopting containers and Kubernetes at a record pace to enable the rapid application development that’s needed for business innovation,” StackRox Chief Executive Kamal Shah said in a statement. “The pandemic has heightened the urgency for innovation and remote work has added far greater security demands. As a result, we’re seeing substantial growth in demand for our Kubernetes-native security platform compared to legacy container security solutions.”

Including the new funding, StackRox has raised $61 million to date. Its last round of $25 million was in April 2018.

Image: StackRox