Invincea, Inc., a provider of malware threat protection via virtualization within the desktop OS, today announced that it has raised $5.1 million in growth capital led by Harbert Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures, and New Atlantic Ventures.
The cash injection will be used primarily to expand Invincea’s corporate sales, engineering, and marketing efforts. The company previously raised $2.1 in March 2009, bringing total funding to date to $7.2M.
In addition to announcing the new funding, the company made several announcements on the talent front, including the appointment of Christopher Smith as worldwide VP of Sales. Smith, with more than 20 years of sales experience, formerly served as Eastern Vice President of Sales at ArcSight. HP announced that it would acquire ArcSight for $1.5 billion in September 2010.
“Success begins in understanding how to solve complex industry problems in a simple, meaningful way that clients openly embrace. In looking at the Invincea product and approach to market, I saw these traits clearly exemplified,” said Chris Smith, commenting on his decision to leave ArcSight and join Invincea.
Smith didn’t come to Invincea alone, and brought some ArcSight sales talent with him. Invincea expanded its regional and national sales teams with the addition of PJ Bihuniak, Nick Keller, Ken Kreitzer, and Tom Mitchell, all former ArcSight employees.
To head up Federal sales, Invincea hired Rob Cahill as Director of Federal Sales, who formerly handled federal sales for NetWitness.
Organizations are struggling to defend against attackers that are infiltrating corporate networks through spear phishing attacks and convincing users to open malicious attachments, further enabling them to access other corporate IT assets and data.
Invincea helps address some of these threats by providing a solution that insulates users from untrusted content through fully virtualized browser and PDF reader solutions that run in their own virtual environments separate from the desktop operating system. These virtual environments help protect users against all types of Web-borne and PDF embedded threats, including zero-days.
Originally funded by DARPA to build a prototype virtualized Web browsing solution, the patent-pending technology developed jointly with George Mason University’s Center for Secure Information Systems has been commercialized by Invincea.
Invincea says its technology is being deployed within the Departments of Defense and Energy and Federal Civilian agencies, and that it continues to grow its presence across various industries, including oil and gas, high tech, financial services, defense, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and energy.
Invincea CEO Anup Ghosh was recently appointed as a member of the National Academy of Engineering’s Naval Studies Board to contribute to the development of the US Navy’s future cyber security strategies. Additionally, Dr. Ghosh was asked by the US Air Force to be a consultant to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board pending White House approval, wherein he will be providing guidance and expertise on cyber situational awareness in support of the US Air Force’s future cyber strategy.
