Internet of Things Security Company, Bastille, Extends Angel Round by $1 Million to Include David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners
ATLANTA (PRWEB) January 21, 2015 -- Bastille, the first security company to detect and mitigate threats from the Internet of Things (IoT), announced today that it has extended its angel round with a $1 million investment, including funding from David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the most successful investors in cybersecurity startups. The investment marks the second time that Cowan has backed Bastille’s founder, Chris Rouland. This expansion of the round comes less than five months after Bastille secured an initial $1.5 in funding led by prominent cybersecurity investor Tom Noonan and venture capitalist John Huntz; and further underscores the immediate security concerns resulting from the proliferation of the IoT.
Rouland, a veteran cybersecurity expert and entrepreneur, founded Bastille in April 2014 to pioneer IoT security through next-generation sensors and software that can monitor new threats in the corporate airspace. This heightened visibility enables enterprise IT security professionals to monitor IoT devices entering their environments, particularly those that connect to wireless communications protocols beyond WiFi, such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, and others. The advanced insight empowers corporations to accurately quantify risk and mitigate 21st century airborne threats that are the unintended consequences of IoT.
The extended angel round will help Bastille fuel engineering and support pilot programs, which include some of the world’s largest financial institutions. Bastille will be formally launching its product at the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco this April.
The Need for IoT Security
Historically security has accounted for about 5 percent of total IT spend. For IoT specifically - analyst firms estimate that the market will surpass 50-90 billion connected devices worldwide by 2020, and Gartner projects that 20 percent of enterprises will “invest heavily” in IoT security by 2017. In addition, IDC projects the market size at $7.1 trillion by 2020. While it remains to be seen just how enterprise security will be affected in the coming years, there is no doubt that the emergence of the IoT creates significant and complex challenges for those who are responsible to protect information networks and physical environments; a sentiment reinforced by the U.S. House of Representative’s decision to form an IoT caucus just last week.
“It’s easy to monitor and filter Internet packets moving in or out of routers, but how do you see - let alone secure - the wireless RF packets zipping by us all the time?" asked David Cowan, co-founder of VeriSign, Good Technology, and Defense.Net. “When I heard that Rouland’s team was developing a generalized solution to IoT security, I asked him to let me join the round."
Bastille sees a void in the market for intrusion detection and vulnerability assessment for devices on the IoT. With wearable technology predicted to be a $10 billion dollar industry by 2016, these devices as well as a host of others utilizing protocols like Bluetooth, ZigBee and EnOcean will be entering enterprise buildings with insufficient security. Likewise, Bastille is also aiming to protect corporations from malicious devices operating on cellular bands that could be used for unauthorized data collection or to launch attacks on corporate networks.
“There are thousands of manufacturers scrambling to bring IoT devices to market without concern for security or privacy,” said Chris Rouland, founder and CEO of Bastille. “As these devices begin to infiltrate business environments en masse, new complex and sophisticated threats will frequently evolve, and the responsibility will be on the enterprise to protect their assets and employees from accidentally or maliciously introducing new vectors of compromise.”
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About Bastille
Based in Atlanta and launched in 2014, Bastille is pioneering Internet of Things (IoT) security with next-generation security sensors and airborne radio frequency (RF) emission detection, allowing corporations to accurately quantify risk and mitigate 21st century airborne threats. Through its proprietary technology, Bastille helps enterprise organizations protect cyber and human assets while providing unprecedented visibility of IoT devices that could pose a threat to network infrastructure. Currently in pilot testing, Bastille expects general availability in 2015. For more information, visit http://www.bastille.io and follow @BastilleNet on Twitter.
Caroline Cassidy, AR|PR, http://arpr.co/, +1 (855) 300-8209, [email protected]
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