Securonix Inc. today said that it has raised $24 million in funding to widen the adoption of its hybrid cloud security platform, which blends features from multiple product categories to help enterprises fend off cyberattacks more effectively. 

The funding was provided by Capital One Financial Corp.’s Capital One Ventures. The fund’s previous investments include Snowflake Inc. and Cylance Inc., an “internet of things” security provider that was acquired for $1.4 billion last year.

Founded in 2007, Securonix helps companies protect their hybrid cloud environments from hackers. It provides a SIEM, or security information and event management, platform that analyzes activity data from a company’s infrastructure to identify suspicious events. Securonix’s platform also includes an array of other features that have historically only been found in products outside the SIEM category.

Customers have access to thousands of so-called playbooks that can automatically fix certain security issues. Playbooks are workflows that each describe a series of steps the Securonix platform should take when it encounters a particular type of threat. They can be launched with a few clicks from the management console, which the startup says allows administrators to respond to security issues faster than by carrying out remediation steps annually. 

Such playbook-based automation capabilities are usually only found in what Gartner Inc. defines as SOAR, or security orchestration, automation and response products. Securonix says its approach of combining SOAR and SIEM features in one platform lets administrators work more efficiently. Instead of using disparate products with separate interfaces, administrators can manage everything via a single centralized console. 

In the same spirit of combining features from historically disparate tools, Securonix has also thrown network security and machine learning-based threat analytics into the mix. The machine learning component creates a baseline of how a system normally behaves, then uses the baseline to spot anomalous activity. On the network security side, meanwhile, Securonix scans the data traffic flowing between a company’s systems to detect malicious packets. 

The startup claims its platform’s all-in-one feature set allows it to mitigate a wide range of security issues. In an Amazon Web Services environment, for example, Securonix says its platform can detect both external threats such as login attempts from malicious IP addresses and suspicious activity happening inside the environment, including malicious configuration changes.

In addition to investing $24 million in Securonix through its venture arm, Capital One has struck a strategic partnership with the startup. The companies said they will collaborate to “develop new product uses” in areas including IoT threat detection and application security, among others. Capital One will furthermore work with Securonix to help it win more customers in the financial services sector.

The push into financial services is part of a broader plan by the startup to accelerate its sales growth following the investment. Securonix’s expansion effort was already in full swing prior to the funding. The startup disclosed today that bookings of its cloud-based SIEM platform are up 200% year-over-year and, in recent quarters, it has grown the size of its team by over 50%, though it didn’t provide specific numbers.

“Joining Capital One’s world-class investment portfolio alongside transformative cloud-native companies, such as Snowflake, strengthens our ability to deliver best-in-class Cloud SIEM while accelerating product innovation and company growth,” said Securonix Chief Executive Sachin Nayyar.

Image: Securonix