Web security firm WhiteHat Security on Tuesday announced that it landed a $31 million round of funding led by JMI Equity, with additional investment from previous investor, Investor Growth Capital (IGC).
The company, which had previously raised a total of $18 million before this round, said the new cash would help it expand its business including an increased focus on the small-to medium-sized enterprise (SME) market, sales of its Sentinel Mobile and Sentinel Source offerings, and continued international expansion.
With a current headcount of about 260 employees, the company plans to add about 100 more employees throughout 2013, Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CTO of Santa Clara, California-based WhiteHat told SecurityWeek.
Grossman, a former information security officer at Yahoo!, founded the company in 2001.
WhiteHat Sentinel, the company’s flagship cloud-based platform, helps test and monitor the security of web sites for organizations across various industries including e-commerce, finance and healthcare.
More than 11,000 websites rely Sentinel for security monitoring and mangement, the company said.
WhiteHat also offers a mobile edition of Sentinel that lets businesses assess the source code and runtime interactions of mobile applications.
“From the start, WhiteHat has been driving Web security to the forefront of the industry by helping organizations understand the importance of securing their most critical assets at the application layer,” Stephanie Fohn, CEO of WhiteHat Security, said in a statement. “WhiteHat has established a leadership position in the enterprise and we have the resources and expertise to expand our market share globally with enterprise customers and within SME. JMI and IGC have experience working with a significant number of successful companies in the SaaS and security markets. We believe they will be valuable partners in our continued success.”
The company claims year-over-year growth in new bookings of more than 75 percent and a customer retention rate of more than 95 percent.
“Web application vulnerabilities are rising at an alarming rate in recent years and can have a dramatic impact on a company’s business and reputation,” said Peter Arrowsmith, General Partner at JMI Equity.
“WhiteHat’s holistic approach to security throughout the software development lifecycle – from source code through completed production application – provides an advantage that few security providers can achieve,” Arrowsmith added. “We believe that this approach differentiates WhiteHat as a true leader in the application security space, and we are pleased to partner with the company as it continues to meet a critical market need.”