NEDian Rehan Jalil's Cloud Security Startup Gets $6.3 Million VC Funding

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistani-American NEDian Rehan Jalil's Cloud Security Startup Elastica Comes Out Of Stealth With $6.3M From Mayfield

Elastica has an engineering team working in Karachi, Pakistan.

 

Jalil's prior startup Wichorus also used Pakistani engineering talent in Karachi. 

Rehan Jalil (2nd from right) at an NEDians Convention 2007 Panel Discussion in Silicon Valley

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/cloud-security-startup-elastica-co... via @techcrunch

Elastica, a cloud security startup launched in 2012, is coming out of stealth mode with $6.3 million in Series A funding from the Mayfield Fund. The startup is also launching its new apps that offer real-time threat detection and even post-incident forensic analysis.

As more enterprises embrace SaaS and other cloud-based services, they are increasingly feeling the need to have a different approach to security beyond just traditional firewalls. This shift means over $2 billion annual market for cloud security vendors like Elastica. As Gartner noted last year, the highest growth is forecast to occur in cloud-based tokenisation and encryption, security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability assessment and web application firewalls.

Elastica joins a fast growing club of cloud security startups promising to combine data science and in some instances even machine learning tools to help companies and employees secure SaaS data. There’s huge investor interest in the segment and some of the biggest names in the enterprise software world are backing many of these startups.

Elastica was founded in 2012 by Rehan Jalil, former CEO of WiChorus, which was sold to Tellabs for $165 million in 2009.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/cloud-security-startup-elastica-co...

 

 

Tom Reilly Interview from Elastica Inc on Vimeo.

Tom Reilly Interview from Elastica Inc on Vimeo.

 

http://info.elastica.net/2014/02/tom-reilly-interview/

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[Riaz Haq]

SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 11, 2015 – Elastica (www.elastica.net), the leader in Data Science Powered™ Cloud Application Security, today announced that it has closed its series B funding round with an investment of $30 million. Third Point Ventures led the round, with participation from Mayfield Fund and Pelion Venture Partners. Robert Schwartz from Third Point Ventures joined the Elastica board.

Forrester Research reported that the public cloud market was $58 billion in 2013, is approaching $91 billion and estimates that it will grow to $191 billion by 2020 (The Public Cloud Market Is Now In Hypergrowth, April 24, 2014). Traditional solutions’ inability to provide security and compliance for enterprise cloud usage has created demand for a new breed of security solutions delivered by Elastica that many leading analyst firms say will be adopted by 25 percent of enterprises by 2016.

As a member of the Cloud Access Security Brokers category, Elastica is competing in a market that Gartner has identified as rising in importance. In the analyst firm’s Emerging Technology Analysis: Cloud Access Security Brokers report (9/25/14), it reported: Since their emergence in 2012, CASBs have grown in importance and today are the primary technical means of giving organizations more control over SaaS security. This technology will become an essential component of SaaS deployments by 2017.

The cloud app security provider will use the investment to further fuel its global expansion, channel sales, engineering, marketing and research teams as it takes a leadership role in the market. Since launching the CloudSOC™ platform last year, Elastica has experienced strong growth along all aspects of its business. Key milestones reached include:

• Rapidly growing customer engagements, with currently more than 275 enterprise clients

• Global expansion with the opening of offices in APAC, EMEA and Canada

• Growth of its employee base to over 130 and the addition of a strong go-to-market and sales team with veterans from Palo Alto Networks, Qualys and Bromium

• Significant channel growth highlighted by partnerships with national firms such as Accuvant (US) and NTT Com Security (UK), as well as regionally focused security integration firms across Europe, APAC and North America such as SecureLink, Cognition Secure, HIC, Guidepoint and RADPOINT

• Recognition and major awards by well-known publications including SC Magazine, CRN, Cloud Awards and Info Security Products Guide

• Expansion of CloudSOC features and functions and new product launches such as Securlets for Box, Dropbox, Office365 and Yammer

• Leadership in introducing the industry’s first Shadow Data research report

“Elastica is the kind of company we like to invest in – one that is rapidly becoming a category leader,” said Robert Schwartz, managing partner at Third Point Ventures, the venture arm of Third Point LLC. “Elastica has very strong momentum as it fundamentally changes the way the enterprise makes usage of cloud apps secure. The company’s innovative solutions, strong management and deep bench of data scientists and researchers have enabled a new category of security for cloud apps that traditional security solutions cannot bridge.”

The financing round highlights Elastica’s rapid business growth in the United States and abroad. This growth is driven by the accelerated adoption of its SaaS-based CloudSOC™ solution that enables global organizations to take full advantage of cloud applications and services while staying safe, secure and compliant.

Elastica continuously protects organizations’ sensitive data as they adopt cloud applications and services by revealing Shadow IT and shadow data, and by providing data governance, compliance risk mitigation and powerful tools for incident response and post-incident analysis. The Elastica CloudSOC platform harnesses advanced data science and machine learning to deliver granular visibility of real-time traffic, advanced anomaly detection to identify threats and real-time content classification. Granular policies can be created and enforced in real time to prevent data breaches, compliance violations and exposure of sensitive data. The SaaS-based delivery model allows organizations to easily deploy the solution with no on-site software or hardware required.

“While cloud apps are increasingly essential for business agility and IT cost effectiveness, they have inherent information exchange and collaboration capabilities that require a new kind of security,” said Rehan Jalil, CEO of Elastica. “Our unique data science technology that delivers effective security across cloud application and services has positioned us to lead the cloud app security category. New financing will further fuel our growth.”

http://www.elastica.net/2015/03/elastica-closes-30-million-series-b...

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani-American and fellow NEDian Rehan Jalil sells Silicon Valley company he cofounded for $280 million

Enterprise security vendorBlue Coat Systems acquiredElastica on Monday for $280 million, allowing the company to offer a more nuanced portfolio to its global customers.

With Elastica’s Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and cloud application security solutions integrated into its feature set, Blue Coat said it can create the industry’s first “global security platform” to protect users no matter where their data resides, whether on-premise, in the cloud or as a hybrid solution. By expanding its portfolio to include more cloud-centric security solutions, Blue Coat said it can also help customers navigate the increasingly complex IT landscape, especially for born-in-the-cloud companies.

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“Given the rapid acceleration of cloud adoption, our holistic data science-powered approach to cloud access security will enhance Blue Coat’s globally deployed security platform, empowering its customers to confidently and securely take advantage of the speed and agility that cloud applications offer,” said Rehan Jalil, CEO and founder of Elastica. “Together we are delivering the industry’s strongest set of enterprise cloud security capabilities.”

Blue Coat’s purchase of Elastica is the company’s second major purchase this year as the security vendor looks to establish dominance in the CASB market. In August, Blue Coat purchased Perspecys, a California-based enterprise cloud data protection solution provider under the auspices of bolstering its security and hybrid cloud portfolio.

The company also unveiled the Alliance Ecosystem of Endpoint Detection and Responseto create a network for sharing security threat information.

http://thevarguy.com/information-technology-merger-and-acquistion-n...