Lacework, provider of a security platform for the cloud generation, has closed a $525 million growth round, bringing it to a valuation of more than $1 billion. The funding round was led by Sutter Hill Ventures and Altimeter Capital, and joined by D1, Coatue, Dragoneer Investment Group, Liberty Global Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, and Tiger Capital.
Lacework is built on Snowflake. Lacework's Polygraph security architecture understands and detects threats in cloud applications and infrastructure by applying automation and machine learning to tackle the scale of security data processing required to record and analyze constant changes in the cloud. As a result, the company says, its customers are able to reduce false positives by up to 98% and investigation time by over 90%. With functionality that reaches across the cloud security posture and cloud protection platform markets, 80% of new Lacework customers replaced two or more point products in 2020.
"The best way to understand the security of any business is to have data for all activity and process it with the lowest latency, regardless of scale," Christian Kleinerman, SVP products, Snowflake. "Lacework’s automation of manual processes and ability to map and analyze cloud changes with their Polygraph demonstrates the power of modern data processing on Snowflake.”
Lacework said the funding reflects Lacework’s growing adoption among digital businesses building on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes. Lacework cited Brightcove, LendingTree, Veeva Systems, and Pure Storage among the cloud-based businesses using its technology.
Lacework said it had more than 300% revenue growth in 2020. The funding will be used to accelerate the strategies that drove that growth as well as extend its go-to-market and partner ecosystem operations, and expand its engineering and R&D teams across the U.S. and Europe.
The next phase of Lacework’s growth will focus on extending its SaaS security platform and expanding into new adjacent spaces, all with a focus on enabling customers to innovate in the cloud with speed and safety. Furthermore, the investment will enable Lacework to deliver additional integrations across the DevOps toolchain and into security data lake initiatives for Snowflake customers.
According to Lacework, applications built on cloud infrastructure services are complex and change constantly, which makes securing cloud workloads and services at scale impossible when relying on manual tasks and disparate tooling.
Lacework says that with the worldwide adoption of public cloud infrastructure as a service forecast to grow from $51 billion in 2020 to $82 billion in 2022 according to Gartner, there is a heightened demand for cloud security and compliance. Gartner also anticipates that “99% of all cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault through at least 2023,” with 50% of companies unintentionally exposing components of their own cloud applications and infrastructure to the internet in 2021, up from 25% in 2018.
Lacework was built to recognize cloud changes at scale without requiring manual interventions by security teams every time a new cloud service or technology is adopted. Lacework is built on Snowflake, and its Polygraph security architecture understands and detects threats in cloud applications and infrastructure by applying automation and machine learning to tackle the massive scale of security data processing required to record and analyze constant changes in the cloud. As a result, Lacework customers are able to reduce false positives by up to 98% and investigation time by over 90%. With functionality that reaches across the Cloud Security Posture and Cloud Protection Platform markets, 80% of new Lacework customers replaced two or more point products in 2020.
"Building on cloud is the biggest shift the IT industry has ever witnessed. Constant cloud changes require a new approach to security critical for our customers adapting and scaling as fast as clouds innovate," said Dan Hubbard, CEO, Lacework. "This round will allow us to extend our product differentiation leadership which is critical in a transformative market driven by both fast-moving builders and sophisticated attackers."
For more information, go to www.lacework.com.