Netskope, a provider of cloud app security and analytics solutions, announced on Thursday that it has closed a $35 million Series C funding round led by Accel Partners.
The Los Altos, California-based startup offers a platform that enables IT administrators to create policies that prevent the loss of sensitive data and optimize cloud app usage in real-time, whether IT manages the app or not.
The company said that the new funds would be used to accelerate research and development, sales, support and marketing.
The investment brings Netskope’s total funding to $56.4 million.
“As workers demand more effective tools to do their jobs, it’s inevitable more cloud apps will be introduced to the enterprise without IT’s knowledge,” said Sanjay Beri, CEO and founder of Netskope. “Our vision is to help CIOs tackle the accelerating shadow IT conundrum with detailed real-time insights on how every cloud app is being used and enabling them to enforce well-informed granular policies that encourage smart cloud app usage, rather than simply blocking or allowing certain apps.”
Since the company launched in October 2013, it has signed up more than 100 companies as customers. The company currently has just over 100 employees and expects to double its employee headcount by the end of 2014.
Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and The Social+Capital Partnership also participated in the round. Eric Wolford, Partner at Accel Partners, will join the Netskope Board.
“Shadow IT is big and growing fast, with IT leaders discovering cloud usage 10 times greater than what they had thought or approved. While a significant threat to the business, Shadow IT represents a huge opportunity to propel the business forward and to gain significant IT leverage. Rather than clamping down, IT can embrace this trend by using Netskope to provide transparently the real time visibility, security and compliance requirements the business demands of all applications,” Wolford said.
Skyhigh Networks, a startup that emerged from stealth mode last year, also offers a solution to help enterprises address cloud data protection requirements — including contextual access control, application auditing, encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), and cloud-to-cloud access control.
