Digital Guardian is taking in a chunk of capital and adding a slate of new executives to push its cybersecurity software, amid businesses’ renewed concerns over digital attacks and need to comply with the latest privacy and data protection mandates.
The Waltham, MA-based company closed on $30 million in new funding led by private equity firm and previous investor LLR Partners. Other earlier Digital Guardian investors joined the round, including GE Pension Trust, MassMutual Ventures, Brookline Venture Partners, Golub Capital, and Siemens Financial Services’ venture capital unit.
Digital Guardian says its cybersecurity products help stop data theft from both insiders and external attackers. Its data protection platform runs on more than 4.5 million devices across 50 countries.
The cash and expanded management team—including new heads of engineering, technology, and product management—were mapped out when CEO Mo Rosen joined Digital Guardian in February from CA Technologies, where he led the company’s cybersecurity business.
“We collectively, the board and current investors, wanted to fund as aggressive a run at the opportunity as we possibly could,” Rosen tells Xconomy.
The path forward for Digital Guardian is to grow from its current headcount of about 375 employees and invest in the people who can develop the next generation of its cybersecurity software. Rosen says another main focus is being sure the product the company puts out “plays nice” with other vendors’ cybersecurity tools.
“Digital Guardian isn’t the end all and be all solution,” Rosen says. “We live in an ecosystem just like most technology companies do. Part of our innovation is to wind up more seamlessly integrated in the ecosystem.”
Data analytics and machine learning will play a big role in Digital Guardian’s product playbook. For example, its algorithms can classify data and alert users when information is moving in suspicious ways that need attention, Rosen says.
LLR partner David Stienes sees the demand for Digital Guardian’s products growing as governments design data protection regulations that respond to privacy concerns.
“With the advent of new compliance and privacy regulations, there is a tremendous market opportunity for a company that specializes in effective data protection,” Stienes said in a press release.
In addition to the funding, this week Digital Guardian named Debra Danielson its chief technology officer and head of engineering. Rosen says he met Danielson when she was vetting merger and acquisition candidates at CA Technologies. Danielson did the due diligence on CA’s deal to buy Rosen’s company Xceedium in 2015. They worked together when CA bought Veracode in 2017 for $614 million. (A year later, CA sold Veracode to private equity firm Thoma Bravo in a $950 million deal.)
Digital Guardian also promoted its previous chief marketing officer, Constance Stack, to chief strategy officer and added Ben Cody as its head of product management. Cody was the head of product at McAfee and was responsible for data protection and platform technologies.
