Cybersecurity startup Invincea closed a $10 million funding round this week, led by ORIX Growth Capital, a sub-divison of financial mega company ORIX Corporation. Invincea's software is designed as a preventative that protects against malware and analyzes systems for potential vulnerabilities.
"The funding round will help us amplify our message and get to a larger market," Invincea CEO Anup Ghosh told DC Inno in an interview. "We want to put it on the map."
Invincea has now raised more than $55 million and has been growing steadily since it closed a government research contract for $8.1 million about two years ago. Ghosh, a former DARPA project manager, attributed that in part to the rapidly expanding awareness of cybersecurity threats in more and more industries. Headlines about data breaches from government and corporate servers help in that regard too.
"We don't rule out any industry, it's a horizontal playing field, but we are seeing significant traction in the healthcare, insurance federal and financial sectors. There's a significant uptick in regional banks and community banks too."
Hiring new people for the D.C.-area will be a key next step for Invincea as it works to match the growing number of potential clients interested in what it can do for them. Though the focus is very much still on response over prevention, the sheer volueme of successful cyber attacks is starting to change attitudes.
"[Invincea] can ramp up additional sales and marketing as cybersecurity's importance is recognized," ORIX Growth Capital co-head Jeff Bede told DC Inno. "What Invincea offers is needed by any industry."
"Cybersecurity is not an IT issues, it's a business issue."
Invincea is far from alone on the list of area cybersecurity startups that have raised money of late. The streak of cybersecurity funding over the summer has continued through the fall. The $10 million fits comfortably in wide range of amounts companies are raising, from less than $1 million seed rounds to the $42.5 million raised in August by PhishMe.
"Ransomware is changing the way people think about about cybersecurity, it makes it tangible," Ghosh said. " Cybersecurity is not an IT issues, it's a business issue, and it's an accelerating issue."
