Skyhigh Networks, a cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) has received $40m in series D funding from Thomvest Ventures along with participation from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners.
Apart from this, a Thomvest Ventures venture partner, Umesh Padval has joined the board of directors at Skyhigh Networks.
Skyhigh says that this round of funding has increased its valuation from the last round and can bring it closer to profitability. The company plans to use this funding to increase its investments and footprint in the field of cloud security market with its Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solution.
According to analysts, the newly emerging CASB market as one of the fastest growing sector in security markets.
The adoption of central control point to secure confidential data stored in thousands of cloud services is necessary evolution in the security market – from network security to end-point security to cloud security.
According to Umesh Padval, Skyhigh pioneered in the CASB market and is trying to tap into a massive market with leadership in technical products and a world-class team.
He also noted that massive immigration to cloud is taking place right now and it is becoming an issue to handle for chief information security officers across organisations.
The market for cloud security is directly linked with the demand for software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). These services together are projected to reach $141bn by the year 2019.
Technology research company, Gartner noted that by 2020, 85% of large corporations will use cloud services for majority of their work and said that security officers should deploy CASB for centralised control over multiple services which could otherwise require individual service management.
Skyhigh Networks co-founder and CEO Rajiv Gupta said: “We are thrilled to have raised an up round from Thomvest, Greylock, and Sequoia, particularly in the current environment.
“It is a testament to the incredible work of our employees and will enable us to accelerate our growth and carry us to profitability. We are delighted to have Umesh Padval from Thomvest join our Board of Directors as we capitalize on the market opportunity to be the control point for the cloud.”
Skyhigh was established in 2013 and is one of the leading CASB solution providers with 600 enterprise customers and 30 million end users. Skyhigh says that its list of clientele includes companies across every vertical with 40% of Fortune 500.
It claims to have offered the first pure-play CASB solution, which offers a very broad platform with 12 functional areas such as encryption, data loss prevention, user behaviour analytics and contextual access control.
The company also offers comprehensive functional coverage for shadow and sanctioned cloud applications, where support for all deployment modes including reverse-proxy, forward-proxy and Application Programming Interface (API) are provided.
