Software provider Microsoft paid an undisclosed amount to acquire BlueTalon, a US-based data protection software vendor backed by media group Bloomberg, on Monday.
Founded in 2013, BlueTalon has developed software that helps enterprise customers establish policies for how their employees can access data in compliance with data privacy laws. In addition to user access control, the platform also offers data masking and auditing tools for hybrid data environments.
The company raised more than $16m in a 2016 series A round led by venture capital firm Maverick Ventures that included Bloomberg Beta, the big data-focused investment arm of Bloomberg.
Arsenal Venture Partners, Signia Venture Partners, Data Collective, Divergent Ventures and Stanford-StartX Fund also participated in the series A round, which followed $3.4m from undisclosed investors in July 2015, according to a regulatory filing.
Signia Venture Partners had led a $5m round for BlueTalon five months before, investing alongside Bloomberg Beta, Divergent Ventures, Data Collective, StartX Fund, Berggruen Holdings and Biosys Capital.
A securities filing from the same month however placed the size of the round at $6.4m and the number of participants at nine. BlueTalon had received $1.5m in seed capital from investors including Data Collective the previous year.
Rohan Kumar, corporate vice-president for Microsoft’s Azure Data division, said: “The [intellectual property] and talent acquired through BlueTalon brings a unique expertise at the apex of big data, security and governance.
“This acquisition will enhance our ability to empower enterprises across industries to digitally transform while ensuring right use of data with centralised data governance at scale through Azure.”