Security software start-up Port Authority Technologies Inc. has closed a further financing round, raising $18 million. The company, which develops information leak prevention solutions, has raised almost $40 million to date, after raising a total of $20 million in two previous financing rounds.
PortAuthority was founded in 2000 by VP technical services Assaf Litai, Ariel Peled, and chief scientist Dr. Lidror Troyansky. The company has developed software that protects against the unauthorized distribution of sensitive enterprise information by employees. PortAuthority’s technology controls sensitive enterprise or company content, and helps ensure compliance with enterprise information security regulations, for example under the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in the US or regulations governing sensitive medical information such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US.
PortAuthority’s CEO is Pete Folley, who is based at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The company also has a branch in Raanana, Israel. According to IVC Online data, PortAuthority’s investors include Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital, which also participated in the latest round. The other investors are Lexington Ventures and CAP Ventures. The company has had initial sales and it is targeting its product range at large enterprises which need to prevent information leaks.
Sequoia Israel Capital partner and PortAuthority director Shmil Levy said, “This technology is breaking new ground and all the big companies are interested in this product. Many companies have developed security solutions that approach this problem from the outside (firewalls, for example), but there are no solutions for interior protection. This is the field that PortAuthority is focusing on and in which it can grow.”
PortAuthority refused to disclose its value, although information security market sources believe that the company must have a high valuation, in order to raise the amount of finance that it has, or at least be a company capable of demonstrating a sufficiently strong presence on the market, whether in number of customers or through pilots with large users.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 17, 2006
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