Container Security Firm Twistlock Raises $33 Million
15.8.18 securityweek IT

Twistlock, a provider of solutions to protect cloud containers, today announced that it has raised $33 million in Series C funding, bringing the total raised to-date by the Portland, Oregon-based company to $63 million.

The company’s flagship Twistlock platform provides protection for containers, serverless functions, and container-as-a-service platforms like AWS Fargate into a single full stack security platform.

The latest version of the platform brings cloud native forensics capabilities to help during the incident response process.

Twistlock“The Twistlock platform replaces multiple outdated layers of security – from standalone vulnerability assessment tools that force developers to read CVEs in CSVs, to application firewalls that require static configuration and updates with every build,” CEO Ben Bernstein explained in an associated blog post.

Founded in 2015, Twistlock says it has grown its customer base over 350 percent each year, and counts 25 percent of Fortune 100 companies as customers, including McKesson, Walgreens, Aetna and USAA. The company also said it has grown its employee headcount 200 percent year over year, and has opened five offices across the globe.

Led by ICONIQ Capital, existing investors YL Ventures, TenEleven, Rally Ventures, Polaris Partners and Dell Technologies Capital all participated in the round.

Twistlock is one of several companies looking to lead in the container security space that has raised funding in recent years. Israel-based Aqua Security has raised more than $38 million, NeuVector has raised $7 million, Capsule8 has raised $23.5 million, and Tigera received $23 million. Container security firm StackRox announced in April that it had secured $25 million in a Series B funding round, bringing the total raised by the company to more than $39 million.

While several security startups have emerged with a focus on containers, veteran security firms are also targeting the sector. In June 2017, cloud-based security and compliance solutions provider Qualys launched a product designed for securing containers across cloud and on-premises deployments.

According to a 2015 survey of 272 IT decision makers in North America conducted by Twistlock, 91 percent of the respondents said they were concerned about the security of containers.