It certainly isn’t news that D.C. is one of the most bustling places in the cybersecurity industry. A great deal of cybersecurity companies, ranging from startups to legacy providers, are based in the area, serving a diverse clientele in the private and public sectors.
The region boasted more than 105,000 people employed in the industry between October 2018 and September 2019, according to CyberSeek, a Department of Commerce-funded website that tracks the cybersecurity skills gap. Despite such a high volume of employment, the area’s concentration of cybersecurity job demand is seven times the national average, according to CyberSeek.
Here’s a look at some of the companies that are continuing to shape D.C. as the country’s foremost hotbed of cybersecurity business. Drawing from the business database Crunchbase, the list ranks the 10 area companies with the most investor funding.
1. LookingGlass Cyber Solutions: $119 million
LookingGlass Cyber Solutions tops the list with about $119 million in funding. The Reston, Va.-based firm monitors and protects its customers’ networks from cyberattacks using its threat detection platforms. The company claims this spot without any funding announcements in 2019. It raised $10 million last year from unknown investors, and it brought in a $26.3 million Series D in 2017 led by Triangle Peak Partners and Eastward Capital. In 2015, LookingGlass bought Cyveillance, a D.C. area open source intelligence security company, for $35 million.
2. Endgame: $111.4 million
Based in Arlington, Va., Endgame professes to “protect the world’s data from attack” with its endpoint protection services. The company says its machine learning-powered services are used by the U.S. military “as well as some of the world's largest commercial organizations.” In June, Endgame agreed to an $234 million acquisition by Elastic, a Dutch software company with a U.S. headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The sale closed in October. The Washington Post named Endgame in its list this year of top workplaces.
3. IronNet Cybersecurity: $110 million
Based in in Fulton, Md., IronNet provides network monitoring and threat intelligence sharing tools IronDefense and IronDome. The company was founded in 2014 by former NSA and U.S. Cyber Command chief Kieth Alexander. The significance of the top brass might have something to do with the IronNet’s whopping $78 million Series B round in 2018, led by C5 Capital. The company has said that about half a dozen energy sector providers use its products. In November, it announced a new London headquarters and an expansion in the Middle East. It was also a DC Inno 50 on Fire company in 2019.
4. Mandiant: $70 million
Mandiant, based in Alexandria, Va., is a mainstay of the local cybersecurity community. Founded in 2004 and acquired for $1 billion 10 years later by California’s FireEye, Mandiant is one of the country’s top security companies specializing in incident response. Organizations often call up Mandiant to conduct the forensic investigation after a major cybersecurity incidents, such as the massive Equifax breach in 2017.
5. Expel: $67.5 million
Expel came onto the D.C. cybersecurity scene in 2016 in hopes of disrupting what it calls the “managed security” space. Based in Herndon, Va., the company provides a platform that monitors customers’ networks and can advise them on how to improve their security. Although a relative newcomer, it has raised enough to get noticed. Expel raked in $40 million in a Series C funding round, led by Index Venture Partners. It was one of DC Inno's Coolest Companies in 2018.
6. Cofense: $58 million
Formerly known as PhishMe, Cofense is a Leesburg, Va.-based company that provides an email security platform that monitors for phishing threats. Publicly, the company has remained at the same level of funding since 2018, but chunks of it have changed hands in the past two years. Cofense was sold for $400 million in 2018 to Pamplona Capital Management, a British hedge fund manager. However, the sale was scrutinized by the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) due to Pamplona’s connection to a Russian backer. Pamplona ended up selling its stake to BlackRock Private Equity Partners, a previous investor in the Cofense.
Although many of the region’s cybersecurity companies focus on broader network monitoring, duping people by email remains one of the most common threats to an enterprise, according to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report.
7. ThreatQuotient: $57.2 million
ThreatQuotient runs a threat intelligence platform, ThreatQ, that the company boasts can integrate all facets of a customer’s network to protect it in a streamlined way. The company’s last funding round was in 2017, with a $30 million Series C led by Adams Street Partners. Last month, ThreatQuotient CEO John Czupak was named one of the top 25 executives by the Northern Virginia Technology Council. It was also a 2019 DC Inno 50 on Fire company.
8. Fidelis Cybersecurity $49.3 million
Around since 2002, Fidelis offers a suite of threat detection and response services, promising to work with any kind of network environment the customer has. The company is owned by Marlin Equity Partners, which bought it from General Dynamics in 2015 for an undisclosed amount. Last year, Fidelis announced a raise of $25 million from existing investors, which it said it would invest into its managed detection and response service. Based in Bethesda, Md., the company says it serves several Fortune 500 companies, as well as U.S. and foreign government agencies.
9. Dragos: $48.2 million
Dragos is a Hanover, Md., based startup founded in 2016 that focuses on protecting industrial control systems (ICS) and the industrial internet of things (IIOT). The company had a $37 million Series B funding round in 2018, led by Canaan partners. It also announced plans to open an office in Saudi Arabia last year. With the increasing connectedness of industrial facilities like factories and oil and gas plants, ICS is one of cybersecurity’s burgeoning spaces. Dragos is one of the firms that investigated Trisis, a major cyberthreat that hit a Saudi petrochemical plant in 2018.
10. GigaTrust: $46.2 million
GigaTrust specializes in secure email and document collaboration services. It focuses on customers using Microsoft’s cloud products like Office 365. The company was founded in 2000 and is based in Herndon, Va. It most recently raised $20 million in private equity funding from Balance Point Capital Partners in 2016.
