WhiteHat Security, a provider of website risk management solutions, has secured $8 million in new capital to fuel company growth. In its growth plans, the in Santa Clara, California based company says it will open a Threat Research Center in Houston, Texas, and increase its staff nearly sixty percent in 2011. The company also is rumored to have a new product line in the works.
The company says its growing at more than three times the overall market rate, and is eyeing aggressive growth of Sentinel, its flagship SaaS-based website vulnerability management solution that currently manages more than 4,000 websites.
The funding comes from Investor Growth Capital (IGC), a global growth equity investment firm, which in addition to providing $8 million in fresh capital, will provide strategic support for WhiteHat Security’s vision to increase its presence around the globe.
“We are pleased to bring on board a long-term focused, growth investor with years of experience backing high-growth software and technology firms,” said Stephanie Fohn, chief executive officer, WhiteHat Security. “For WhiteHat Security, this investment is the right step to fuel our growth as the Web security market expands, and is a great validation of our industry-leading work.”
In October 2010, the company unveiled its Threat Research Center (TRC) to operate as an extension of an organization’s information security team. As an added component to its SaaS based vulnerability management service, the TRC aims to help enterprises focus on vulnerability remediation, overall risk posture, and technology and business goals.
Just recently, in June 2011, WhiteHat acquired static code analysis technology from Infrared Security and brought management on board to guide the integration of the SaaS-based static testing solution into the WhiteHat Sentinel product line.
WhiteHat Security was founded in 2001 by former Yahoo! Security officer Jeremiah Grossman, an expert in Web security, founder of the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC), and co-author of XSS Attacks: Cross Site Scripting Exploits and Defense. Grossman will be speaking as part of a panel session at next week’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas titled, “Trillions of Lines of Code and Counting – Securing Applications At Scale.“
