UPDATED 14:19 EDT / OCTOBER 18 2017

INFRA

Duo Security, authentication provider to web giants, raises $70M

More than 10,000 organizations, including web giants such as Facebook Inc., rely on Duo Security Inc.’s technology to manage access to their infrastructure. Today, the startup announced that it has raised $70 million in funding to help it grow that number even more.

The round was jointly led by Meritech Capital Partners and Lead Edge Capital. They took part alongside five other investors, including software-as-a-service giant Workday Inc., which provides integration with Duo’s flagship Trusted Access platform.

The platform enables companies to enforce restrictions on how workers log into internal applications. The cornerstone of the offering is Duo Mobile, a two-factor authentication app that the startup says can be configured according an organization’s specific needs. A cloud-based management dashboard lets administrators define the requirements that users must meet before they may access a system.

A company could, for example, permit access requests only from regions where it has business operations. Trusted Access also makes it possible to perform vetting based on the security of the device from which a login attempt is made. The companion app can determine if a handset is running an outdated operating system, whether or full-disk encryption is enabled encrypted, and myriad other security details.

From there, companies have several ways to verify users who pass the check. The Duo Mobile app can authenticate an employee’s identification using push notifications, physical security tokens and other common methods.

The platform’s core feature set is complemented by more specialized capabilities geared toward large enterprises. Among the most notable is a phishing simulator for testing how well employees handle attempts to steal their login credentials. Dug Song, Duo’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that the new funding will be used to continue developing “solutions to the world’s most fundamental security problems.”

Building more features will certainly be important for the startup given the competition in the authentication market. Several other providers, including Okta Inc., which went public in April, give customers the ability to tailor identity verification procedures according to users’ risk profiles.

Duo Security may have a way to go before hitting the stock exchange, but it’s already a force to be reckoned with from a financial standpoint. The new funding round values the startup at over $1.1 billion.

Image: Duo Security

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