CloudKnox, a provider of identity authorization for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, has closed $12 million in a new round of funding. The round brings CloudKnox Security’s total funding to $22.75 million. The investment will be used to further accelerate the company’s product and go-to-market plans.
“We’ve seen exceptional growth from customers and prospects looking to address the number one risk in their cloud infrastructure,” said Balaji Parimi, CEO and founder of CloudKnox Security. “This positioned us to pre-emptively secure another round of funding to leverage strong market adoption and accelerate our customer expansion. We’re delighted to have Sorenson Ventures join our current investors, who continue to show their commitment to our success.”
At the same time, CloudKnox has announced several key additions to the company’s board and executive team. Stephen Ward, CISO at The Home Depot; Ken Elefant, managing partner at Sorenson Ventures and Suresh Batchu, co-founder and CTO at MobileIron, have joined CloudKnox’s Board of Directors. The company has also appointed John Donnelly as vice president of sales. Mr. Donnelly has more than 30 years of experience as a sales leader, including roles as VP of sales for MobileIron, Vontu and, most recently, as a sales advisor for ClearSky Security and Wing Venture Capital.
The new funding round is led by Sorenson Ventures with participation from early investors, including ClearSky Security, Dell Technologies Capital and Foundation Capital.
“CloudKnox’s vision is compelling: enable security teams to proactively measure and mitigate the greatest risk from operating in the cloud,” said Stephen Ward. “It does so by delivering continuous detection and remediation of over-privileged identities while helping to understand and report on their cloud risk posture. I welcome the opportunity to join the board at a time of significant growth.”
Enterprise Organizations
The new investment comes on the heels of CloudKnox Security’s triple-digit growth in 2019 fueled by rising demand from enterprise organizations looking to protect their critical cloud resources from accidental and malicious insider threats.
“CloudKnox’s exceptional growth demonstrates its value in delivering activity-based control through easily consumable data that makes it simple to take immediate action within the platform and significantly reduce insider risk,” said Ken Elefant, managing partner at Sorenson Ventures. “Based on our discussions with security leaders in Global 10,000 companies, there is a huge unmet need in the market for the CloudKnox solution.”
CloudKnox Security’s innovation over the past year was recognized through a number of industry awards including:
- RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox – The company was named a finalist in the prestigious Innovation Sandbox competition, the launching pad for entrepreneurial cybersecurity companies to showcase their ground-breaking research and innovation
- Best of VMworld – CloudKnox was named a Best of VMworld 2019 Awards winner in the ‘Judge’s Choice: Startup Spotlight’ category
- SC Magazine Awards 2020 – CloudKnox was named a finalist in the “Rookie Security Company of the Year” category
- Info Security Products Guide 2019 – CloudKnox was recognized as the Gold winner in the “New Product or Service of the Year” categoryCyber Security Excellence
- Awards 2019 – The CloudKnox Cloud Security Platform was named a winner in the “Hybrid Cloud Security” category
- National Cyber Security Centre – CloudKnox was selected to join the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)’s fourth Cyber Accelerator cohort
