Big50-2017 Startup Spotlight: Illumio

Illumio

What they do: Provide an “adaptive security platform.”

Problem they solve: According to Illumio, there are more than 250 million servers inside data centers and clouds that are poorly secured and need protection against rapidly evolving threats. Security professionals are burdened with the sheer number of firewall rules, zones, VLANs, and subnets.

And it’s not just the sheer numbers that are a problem, but the complexity of modern networks, as companies migrate to the cloud and embrace a wide variety of new services and technologies.

Automation and hybrid environments break traditional perimeter and legacy solutions, and the expanding attack surface created by today’s network segmentation model leaves as much as 90 percent of computing assets open and exposed to outside attackers.

How they solve it: Illumio’s Adaptive Security Platform (ASP) attaches adaptive segmentation and enforcement to workloads, allowing security pros to secure individual applications and processes without changing subnets, firewalls rules, zones, VLANs – or any other infrastructure settings.

Illumio ASP further reduces risks in data center and cloud environments by delivering application traffic visibility, adaptive segmentation, and encryption – all with no dependency on the network or hypervisor.

Backed by $267M in VC funding, security startup illumio builds out adaptive security platform. http://wp.me/p330ZZ-ik Click To Tweet

This is a distributed software platform designed to continuously protect communications within and across tiers of applications, wherever they are running. It creates secure and granular segmentation to compartmentalize workloads and applications, reducing the attack surface exposed to cyber vulnerabilities.

Thus, Illumio ASP is completely decoupled from infrastructure, meaning no more risks will be introduced through untested updates and misconfigurations.

In late 2016, Illumio released Security Templates, which deliver ready-to-deploy security policies for core data center and cloud applications. Illumio Security Templates are pre-built to secure common applications – they provide segmentation without having to reconfigure the network in any way.

Illumio Security Templates are downloadable, tested and validated policy packs that provide all the segmentation rules needed to write a security policy for common enterprise applications or application components. Illumio Security Templates can be rapidly deployed to secure applications including Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server and MongoDB.

In 2017, Illumio added support for ACLs (Access Control Lists) on Cisco and Dynamic Filters on Arista data center network switches, as well as AWS Security Groups and Azure Network Security Groups.

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, CA

CEO: Andrew Rubin. Rubin co-founded the company and previously served as president of Cymtec and led Business Development for VoiceNet.

Year Founded: 2013

Funding: $267 million raised in four rounds, the most recent being a $125M investment in June 2017 from J.P. Morgan. Investors in earlier rounds include BlackRock Funds, Accel Partners, Formation 8, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst. Individual and angel investors include Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

Competitors include: VMware (NSX), GuardiCore, Palo Alto Networks, and Skyport Systems.

Customers Include Morgan Stanley, Salesforce, Plantronics, King Entertainment, NetSuite, and Creative Artists Agency.

Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: Illumio is a two-time winner! If your startup was in the report last year, and you 1) locked down a $125M VC round, 2) rolled out several new product features, 3) are situated in a market sector with exponential growth potential, and 4) filled out your application to be considered for the Big50 again this year, I’m going to have a tough time keeping you out.

Moreover, Illumio has a solid leadership team that knows this space inside and out, having earned their stripes at VMware, Cisco, Juniper, McAfee, Palantir, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, Nicira, and other security and infrastructure companies.