US-based security software developer Synack has secured $7.5m in a series A round featuring Google Ventures, which invested alongside Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and existing investors Greylock Partners, Allegis Capital, and Derek Smith, the CEO of Shape Security.
Synack has now raised $9m in total, following an investment of $1.5m of seed funding in January 2013. With the new funds, the company can bring in global cybersecurity experts to accelerate the development of its security platform.
“The only way to defend against the influx of sophisticated cyber attacks is to combine advanced technology with human interaction to deliver quality and highly effective results at scale,” said Jay Kaplan, CEO of Synack.
“Since we launched nine months ago, we have recruited some of the most elite, respected, and well known security researchers in the world and worked with enterprise customers across financial services, healthcare, education, and retail. The new funds will help us continue recruiting the best global security talent and further develop our technology platform.”
Synack will draw on the experience of technological security experts worldwide, including former senior analysts from the National Security Agency. The company is advancing traditional security models with crowd security intelligence and with state-of-the-art technology to address the rapidly evolving security needs of the enterprise.
“With the vast amount of enterprises migrating to the cloud, there is an increased number of attack vectors that leave businesses exposed to cyber threats,” said Karim Faris, general partner at Google Ventures.
“Synack is addressing the next-generation of security threats on a global scale by tapping security researchers as an added layer of protection that may be missed by traditional security defences.”
In February, Google Ventures also led a $4m Series A investment in cybersecurity software company ThreatStream that enabled ThreatStream to add a new layer of cybersecurity for government and other customers.