D.C. data security startup Virtru has raised $60 million in new funding to hire aggressively and beef up its privacy protection products as demand for internet safeguards skyrockets.
The new funding allows the company to expand its products that protect data moving through software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce, Looker and Zendesk — to provide “a layer of data-centric security that has not been available until now” for those types of platforms, Virtru co-founder and CEO John Ackerly said in an email.
The company also plans to use the capital to give developers tools to embed data policy controls into the apps they build, he added.
The raise, announced Thursday, also enables Virtru to hire for positions in sales and marketing, research and development, and customer success. The 150-employee company plans to double its headcount this year, and is already working toward adding “dozens of new team members in 2022,” Ackerly said. Specifically, the company is hiring software engineers, sales and customer service leaders, and marketing experts, listings for which are among the more than 30 open roles on its website.
As part of that hiring push, the company has tapped Matt Howard, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Fulton, Maryland-based Sonatype Inc., as its new chief marketing officer.
Virtru has had some overlap with the Sonatype over the years. The software firm's CEO, Wayne Jackson, joined Virtru’s board of directors in 2016 and Charles Gold, Virtru’s CMO from 2014 to 2018, previously led marketing efforts at that company.
The CMO position is one Virtru has charged with driving customer acquisition and growth over the years — and has also seen some turnover. Following Gold’s four-year tenure in the slot, Neville Letzerich was appointed to the role in 2019, but per his LinkedIn profile, left later that year. Virtru did not immediately respond to questions about who succeeded him, and who if anyone Howard will replace.
Virtru secured the Series C financing in a round led by existing investor Iconiq Growth of San Francisco, Iconiq Capital LLC’s tech-focused investment vehicle, and new investor Foundry Capital, an investment partnership from entrepreneurs Jon Ein and Gary Mueller. The backing also came from Chevy Chase’s New Enterprise Associates, New York’s Tiger Global Management LLC, San Francisco’s Bessemer Venture Partners and MC2 Security Fund of D.C., according to the company.
As part of the raise, Ein, Foundry Capital’s CEO, and Michael Chertoff, co-founder of MC2 and former secretary of homeland security, join Virtru’s board of directors.
The latest capital infusion comes on top of $79.8 million in lifetime funding.
Virtru’s encryption platform provides what’s called zero-trust data protection — or, simply put, the requirement that every user, device and application must have permission to access data. The company has seen demand balloon in recent years as cyberattacks increase and the widespread pandemic-era shift to remote work creates new threats to security online.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Virtru has seen usage of its products more than triple “as cloud migrations have accelerated, traditional IT perimeters have evaporated and the flow of sensitive business data has become fundamentally distributed,” Ackerly said.
Virtru reports that more than 7,000 organizations use its platform to protect data in emails, the cloud and SaaS applications. Those customers operate in industries including health care, financial services, tech, education and manufacturing, as well as in federal, state and local government.
Ackerly founded Virtru in 2012 with his brother, Will, who is the company’s chief technology officer. Will Ackerly is a former National Security Agency data security architect who became frustrated with the cumbersome nature of encryption. The brothers launched Virtru’s first product in 2014.
