Company’s Zeek-based sensors are fueling the new data-centric security stack
San Francisco, Calif. — Oct. 17, 2019 — Corelight, providers of the most powerful network traffic analysis (NTA) solutions for cybersecurity, today announced it has secured an additional $50 million in Series C financing led by Insight Partners and its first capital investor, Accel. With this additional round of capital, the company will accelerate investments in product development, research, sales, and marketing with the aim of delivering new capabilities for network defense.
“Corelight recognizes that network data provides ground-truth evidence that security teams need to root out malicious activity inside their organizations,” said Jeff Horing, co-founder and managing director at Insight Partners. “It is this unique data-centric approach that sets Corelight apart from other vendors in the security market space. As a result, we believe that Corelight has substantial opportunities to expand their portfolio and provide customers a fundamentally better foundation for their security programs. We look forward to partnering with the team as they build out that vision.”
“Corelight has quickly established itself as one of the foundational companies within network security with its passionate community of open source users and traction within some of the most discerning enterprise security teams globally,” said John Locke, partner at Accel. “We’re thrilled to double-down on our investment and excited about the growth ahead.”
“What makes our data first security approach so powerful is the global community behind it,” said Greg Bell, CEO of Corelight. “That community generously contributes new detections, parsers, and other capabilities for the benefit of all defenders. In addition to helping Corelight accelerate commercial progress, the new investment will enable us to engage and serve our community at a higher level. Belief in this joint vision is a key driver for the partnership with Insight and Accel, two renowned and experienced firms.”
Corelight was founded by Dr. Vern Paxson (a Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Chief Scientist at Corelight), Robin Sommer (CTO) and Seth Hall (Chief Evangelist) to deliver network visibility solutions for cybersecurity built on an open source framework called Zeek (formerly Bro). Paxson began developing Zeek in 1995 when he was working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The software is now widely regarded as the gold standard for both NSM and network traffic analysis (NTA) and has been deployed by thousands of organizations around the world.
“Zeek is an important element of our network security posture and we’re excited to see what future capabilities unfold,” said Joe Sullivan, CSO at Cloudflare.
Corelight has amplified the power of Zeek with a suite of enterprise features that dramatically simplify enterprise deployments, so organizations can spend more time on threat hunting and less time on system administration. These include out-of-the-box enterprise integrations, distributed sensor management, and data tuning capabilities that can reduce the downstream SIEM costs by 30% or more compared to a typical open source deployment. Corelight sensors are available in physical, virtual or cloud-based form factors to help fit the needs of customers’ network environments.
Corelight is now being used in production by some of the world’s largest organizations in both the public and private sector.
The company has raised a total of $84 million to date, with investment from General Catalyst, Accel, Osage University Partners and Riverbed Technology Co-founder Dr. Steve McCanne in previous rounds. The company has more than doubled in size since its Series B in September 2018.
About Corelight
Corelight delivers the most powerful network visibility solutions for information security professionals, helping them understand network traffic and defend their organizations more effectively. Corelight solutions are built on the Zeek framework (formerly known as “Bro”), the powerful and widely-used open source network analysis framework that generates actionable, real-time data for thousands of security teams worldwide. Zeek data has become the ‘gold standard’ for incident response, threat hunting, and forensics in large enterprises and government agencies worldwide. Corelight makes a family of network sensors — both physical and virtual, at every scale — that take the pain out of deploying Zeek by adding integrations and capabilities large organizations need. The Zeek project was initially developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and has been supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). Corelight is based in San Francisco, Calif. For more information, visit Corelight.com or follow @corelight_inc.
About Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight currently has over $20 billion of assets under management and has cumulatively invested in more than 300 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. Across our people and our portfolio, we encourage a culture around a core belief: growth equals opportunity. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter@insightpartners.
About Accel
Accel is a leading venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders with unique insights, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, DJI, DocuSign, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Jet, Pillpack,Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Tenable, UiPath, Venmo, and Vox Media are among the companies the firm has backed over the past 35+ years. The firm seeks to understand entrepreneurs as individuals, appreciate their originality and play to their strengths. Because greatness doesn’t have a stereotype. For more, visit www.accel.com or @Accel.