Container security firm Twistlock today closed on $17 million in Series B funding, led by Polaris Partners. Existing investors YL Ventures, TenEleven, and Rally Ventures participated in the round, bringing Twistlock’s total venture funding to date to $30 million.
In addition to leading the latest funding round, Polaris’ Brendan Hannigan joined the Twistlock board of directors as chairman. Hannigan joined Polaris in November 2016, following his tenure as general manager of IBM security. Before IBM, he served as president and CEO of security intelligence and analytics firm Q1 Labs, which IBM acquired in 2011.
“We’re excited to partner with Polaris Partners and add Brendan as chairman of the board, given his successful track record running Q1 Labs and scaling the security practice at IBM.” Twistlock CEO Ben Bernstein said in an email. “As Twistlock continues to innovate and scale to the next level, their investment and support will be instrumental in advancing our business.”
Bernstein said the Series B funding will help the company grow its technical staff and invest in future product innovations.
The two-year-old startup, which claims to offer the first security suite for containers, earlier this month launched its updated container security product: Twistlock 2.0.
Twistlock has seen year-over-year growth, reporting over 300 percent growth in its customer base and expanding its operations globally during early 2017. In late 2016, the company opened its Portland, Oregon office. It also has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Herzylia, Israel.
As containers become increasingly popular among enterprises, container security will likely be top-of-mind for IT managers for the foreseeable future. Many containers can share one OS kernel, which means that hacking one container could, in theory, give the attacker access to many.
In an earlier interview with SDxCentral, however, Bernstein said conventional wisdom — that containers pose more of a security risk than virtual machines — is wrong-headed.
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