StackPath debuts with funding from ABRY partners

Dallas-based cybersecurity startup StackPath, has arrived out of stealth onto the market space to offer businesses with enterprise security analytics solutions. It is the brain child of Lance Crosby, former IBM Cloud chief and currently the Founder at SoftLayer, the cloud computing platform that was acquired by IBM for $2 billion in 2013 to boost its cloud computing division. The startup that aims to offer Security-as-a-Service to companies to build a more “secure Internet” also announced to have raised an undisclosed amount of investment from private equity firm, ABRY Partners to provide what it calls to be frictionless, scalable security for the internet and traffic generated. Reuters, however reports the investment to be $150 million as the largest single financing rounds for a private cybersecurity firm. The company says that it will use the funds to create more partnerships and acquisitions and it is not exactly hard to believe given that it claims to have already acquired companies like MaxCDN, a content delivery network (CDN) company, Fireblade, an Israel-based company that offers a web application firewall (WAF) to protect against malignant content and Cloak, a virtual private network (VPN) technology company that brings secure Wi-Fi for iOS and Mac applications. In addition, it has also bought patents for its distributed denial of service (DDOS) mitigation technology to prevent unauthorized cyber threats and attacks, claims the company which did not divulge any financial details about the acquisitions. Lance Crosby, CEO, StackPath, said:

The Internet is where the world does business. It may be the single most important utility supporting businesses today, yet we continue to overtax the ageing infrastructure and struggle to make it secure.

“The StackPath platform is an integrated response to a fragmented problem created by too many individual, appliance-based, bolt-on security solutions. It’s time to give businesses Internet services that have security built in, not bolted on — so they can be reliable guardians of their most precious assets. We appreciate the support from ABRY Partners as we continue our mission of building a path to a secure Internet,” Crosby added. According to Robert Westervelt, Analyst and lead, IDC data security program there were more than 400 million identified malware attacks last year and StackPath hopes to address these cyber threats posing as an one-stop destinations for enterprises. Reportedly, StackPath’s platform will collate and leverage information that each service gathers via a machine learning engine that becomes smarter and more threat-aware with each recorded event. It also claims to deputize each service on the host network with the authority to identify and communicate real-time threats against it to a data repository. The information will not only be available and accessible to StackPath subscribers, but also to application developers via an application programming interface (API). Crosby is also likely to build a core team with hires like Andrew Higginbotham, former Vice President of cloud at CenturyLink and Kim Sheehy, former CFO at CyrusOne. Higginbotham, COO, StackPath also stated:

Just like cloud disrupted the global Infrastructure landscape, StackPath will create a similar, much needed, disruption to the security space. StackPath’s unified, cloud-based approach designed specifically for an ecosystem of IoT, sensors and big data will usher in a significant change to a market with too many niche ‘feature’ companies and a few big legacy giants built for an Internet that largely served Web pages.