Portnox raises $22 million to deploy cloud-native network security for mid-market organizations
Portnox announced the close of a $22 million Series A round of growth financing led by Elsewhere Partners.
Under the leadership of recently appointed CEO Denny LeCompte, an accomplished technology veteran and Elsewhere Partners operating advisor, Portnox plans to use the capital to substantially expand its team and speed global market penetration with a focus on mid-market organizations after establishing its new global headquarters in Austin, Texas. The primary focus for the North American expansion will be building out the operations, sales, marketing and customer success teams.
“By listening to its customers and building on the early success of its on-premises solutions, Portnox anticipated the market need for an end-to-end cloud offering while other NAC players threw all their weight behind on-premises solutions that can’t meet mid-market needs or ignored the calls for more comprehensive cloud solutions,” noted John Thornton, Co-founder and Partner of Elsewhere Partners. “We are at the cusp of the next era of cyber security, with the promise of an incessant barrage of more sophisticated threats across a more diverse landscape of devices and ‘offices’ than ever before. Bringing award-winning NAC solutions to organizations of all sizes, there is vast market potential for Portnox as it explores untapped markets and expands into new geographies.”
Recognized by industry luminaries as delivering NAC, including the RSA 2021 Global InfoSec Awards, Portnox solutions have helped nearly 1,000 organizations around the globe navigate the ever-changing regulatory compliance and cybersecurity landscape. Its coveted cloud-native NAC platform allows users to implement network access control, as well as endpoint risk posture assessment and remediation policies that can be automatically enforced across many sites.
As cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS), Portnox eliminates the need for time-consuming system maintenance such as patches and upgrades. With SOC 2 Type 2 certification, Portnox CLEAR offers out-of-the-box integrations with common network hardware and critical security tools (e.g., active directory, MFA, MDM, SIEM), and works seamlessly with most anti-virus and firewall providers.
“Our team was looking for a quick-to-deploy and easy-to-manage NAC solution delivered from the cloud. Most on-premises NAC solutions are complex and require dedicated engineers to operate and maintain, which is untenable for resource-light IT departments whose staff bear a diverse range of technical responsibility at any given time,” added Marcelo Lew, information security manager at the University of Denver. “Portnox’s powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-native NAC solution delivers essential access control and endpoint security functionality. It was a breeze to deploy in contrast to legacy systems. As a SaaS product, we can seamlessly scale out the service as our infrastructure and operational needs evolve. It’s a game-changer.” Explore more customer use cases here.
Co-founder Ofer Amitai has transitioned to the role of CTO and has joined the newly formed Board of Directors. Amitai will lead and grow Portnox’s Israel-based engineering and international product teams. Co-founder Idan Kuperman will continue in his longstanding role as head of customer experience for Portnox.
“After launching the cloud-native version of our comprehensive NAC platform, we experienced overwhelming demand from the mid-market as resource-strapped organizations struggle to keep pace with the security demands of devices in the era of IoT, BYOD, and an increasingly distributed, mobile-reliant workforce,” said Amitai. “We believe that with Elsewhere Partners’ support and the executive leadership of CEO Denny LeCompte, Portnox will be able to meet mounting demand for cloud-native NAC, while continuing to deliver the exceptional experience our customers have come to expect from our product and team.”
Before taking on his new role as CEO of Portnox, LeCompte helped scale companies such as AlienVault, NetIQ and SolarWinds in executive leadership roles. LeCompte will tap his vast experience leading product strategy for infrastructure and cyber security software solutions for the mid-market while evolving products and building teams to accelerate their market growth.
Additionally, LeCompte will focus on optimizing Portnox’s operations to facilitate its global expansion, while also supporting the product team’s efforts to create cloud-native versions of other complex, on-premises network security tools in the years ahead.
“While the risks and costs associated with network breaches proliferate each year, traditional solutions do not account for the needs of mid-size companies, especially as staffing shortages, skillset gaps and budget constraints continue in today’s volatile market,” noted LeCompte. “The founders and their exceptional team built the only cloud-native NAC solution that can effectively meet the needs of mid-market organizations by scaling to support increasingly distributed workforces, diverse device types, and sophisticated cyberattacks without overcomplicating IT infrastructures and burdening security teams. I look forward to leading the company through its imminent high-growth phase as it delivers today’s network security essentials – authentication and access control, continuous endpoint risk posture assessment and compliance enforcement.”
John Thornton and Nick Stoffregen of Elsewhere Partners will also join the Board alongside Idera Inc. CEO Randy Jacops to support the company’s accelerated market expansion and recruiting efforts.