Technology

Posted on September 11, 2019 by staff

London cybersecurity firm Snyk secures $70m

Technology

‘Developer-first’ security company Snyk has secured a $70m investment.

With the firm’s revenue more than quadrupling this year, the new funding will be used to fuel its next phase of global expansion.

The funding round, led by Accel and existing investors GV and Boldstart Ventures, is its largest round to date and takes its total raised to $102m.

The firm, founded in 2015 by Assaf Hefetz, Danny Grander, and Guy Podjarny helps businesses to find and fix vulnerabilities in their digital infrastructure.

“Increasingly, enterprises around the world understand that the combination of DevOps adoption and growing security awareness are driving the security industry to urgently adapt in order to keep up,” said Podjarny, founder and president.

“Snyk was founded on the belief that developers will embrace security given the right solution. Four years later, we’ve seen that vision become reality, with hundreds of thousands of developers using our solutions to secure their containers and applications.”

The firm said the latest round will be used to accelerate its go-to-market strategy, continue to drive growth in product adoption and usage, and continue its expansion into new global markets.

The firm reports that its customer base grew by 200 per cent this year and boasts enterprise customers including tech giants Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and ASOS.

“Today, every business, from manufacturing to retail and finance, is becoming a software business,” said Peter McKay, investor and board member and the firm’s recently appointed CEO.

“There is an immediate and fast growing need for software security solutions that scale at the same pace as software development.

“This investment helps us continue to bring Snyk’s product-led and developer-focused solutions to more companies across the globe, helping them stay secure as they embrace digital innovation – without slowing down.”

Matt Weigand, Accel, added: “More and more of our business has become software which makes securing our developers and their processes a top priority,” said Mark Geeslin, Senior Director of Product Security, Asurion. “Snyk is helping our security team scale across the organization by giving our developers a tool they will actually use, helping us achieve our goals of running fast, and making sure we are secure every step of the way.”

The firm expects its sector, global open source services, to grow to $32.95bn by 2022. This adoption, in addition to the use of ‘container’ technology, brings new vulnerabilities to the fore, it said.

In a recent report, Snyk said that it found 44 percent of container software from SaaS firm Docker had known vulnerabilities.

Consequently, Podjarny believes the timing of this investment is crucial: “CISOs across the world now acknowledge developer-first security is critical to application and container security and compliance.”

“The explosion in the use of containers, for example, represents an immediate need for secure solutions to protect the entire software development lifecycle.”