This is an exciting day as Cisco announced its intent to acquire our portfolio company CloudLock (read more here). It’s a story that warrants celebration, especially in the Boston-area, where it is another example of Massachusetts’ global leadership in the IT security ecosystem. Since its founding in 2011, CloudLock has grown to be at the forefront […]
At Ascent, we have been investing in IT security for decades. As technology platforms shift, security solutions must both shift with them as well as rise to meet a more severe threat landscape posed by today’s sophisticated cyber criminals and nation-state sponsored hackers. As recent RSA conferences have shown, the challenge – and opportunity – […]
This year’s RSA conference was bigger than ever with more than 40,000 attendees. San Francisco buzzed with security vendors, buyers and investors as they crowded the lobbies of hotels and coffee shops with endless meetings. Being immersed in the atmosphere at RSA was both invigorating and overwhelming. It proved that while the need for cybersecurity […]
With all companies now targets of cyber-attacks, and the average cost of a successful attack rising to $4 million, the demand for security talent is at an all-time high. But while cyber security jobs are up 74 percent in the last five years, more than 209,000 cyber security jobs in the U.S. are unfilled. To […]
The modern security landscape is becoming a competitive arms race between cyber-attackers and defenders. Threats have matured, risks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and vulnerabilities across the enterprise are commonplace – and evolving. While security spending has ballooned as a result – Gartner forecasted that $77 billion would be funneled globally toward IT security efforts in […]
Congratulations to enterprise security industry leader Blue Coat Systems on their acquisition of PerspecSys. Our portfolio company PerspecSys, an early leader in the rapidly emerging cloud data protection market, was recently acquired by security gateway leader Blue Coat Systems. This was a very savvy move by Blue Coat and it positions them well in the […]
The vicious cyberattacks on major organizations like Target, Home Depot, eBay, JP Morgan Chase and recently, Anthem, makes one thing clear: the severity and sophistication of cyberattacks has taken a major leap forward. Having thieves steal sensitive data such as credit card information or personal identities is extremely costly, both financially and to the brands’ […]
In recent posts we’ve discussed how the shift to the cloud, the explosion of mobile usage, and the massive growth in data will help drive the next wave of productivity and economic gains for companies. But these new technologies also dramatically shif the nature of where data is, how much there is, and how it […]
We are very pleased to have participated in another financing round for CloudLock, which on Wednesday announced a $16.5 M Series C. Launched in 2011, CloudLock now protects millions of end-users across a wide range of organizations. They were a pioneer of cloud security and we saw the promise of their vision when we led […]
According to a new study this week, 41 percent of global organizations will increase their IT security budgets in 2014. The increased focus on securing corporate data and devices probably isn’t surprising to most industry onlookers, given the amount of media coverage we’ve seen recently around attacks on enterprises, not to mention Edward Snowden and […]
