Irvine-based security software company CrowdStrike has raised $100 million in Series C funding – its third infusion of outside capital.
Google Capital, the tech giant’s capital investment division, led the financing round and was joined by CrowdStrike customer Rackspace, the company said Monday. CrowdStrike declined to provide specifics on what the investing companies received in return.
CrowdStrike, a nearly 4-year-old company, uses the cloud and lightweight sensors to detect what it calls adversaries, commonly known as hackers. About 75 percent of its customers are private companies and the remainder are government agencies.
“Our technology is really behavioral based, looking for what we call behaviors of attack,” said co-founder and Chief Executive George Kurtz.
The money will allow the software maker to expand its U.S. reach and have a presence in Europe, Asia and Australia, Kurtz said. The funds will also allow the company to expand its consulting and incident response.
Since its debut in 2011 with three co-founders, CrowdStrike has grown to some 210 employees and is hiring new people each week. It’s the second Orange County-based company Kurtz has founded. The first company, Foundstone, focused on vulnerability management for companies and was sold to McAfee for $86 million in 2004; it was later acquired by Intel.
In 2013, CrowdStrike got some attention when one of its researchers took down a malicious “botnet” in real time at the RSA Conference on security in San Francisco.
Part of CrowdStrike’s aggressive approach to its security is how it builds a dossier on hacking groups, who they target and how, and quickly spreads information across CrowdStrike’s customer network.
One thing that has fueled CrowdStrike’s growth is greater attention on the cybersecurity environment in the wake of major data breaches.
“You used to have to evangelize why security is important,” Kurtz said. “Now, boards of directors are so focused on understanding if their company has the right security in place.”
The company said what sets CrowdStrike apart from other security software providers is the ease in which the cloud-based software rolls out, its lower cost and easy to use.
CrowdStrike has raise a total of $156 million in funding to date.
Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com, 714-796-2286
