Last year was historic across the board; we feel fortunate for the secure future we’re building for our employees, clients, and partners.
My first day here was March 1st, 2020. It’s been a whirlwind and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of Orca’s accomplishments.
Starting as a seed of an idea to build a better way to secure the cloud two years ago, we grew Orca Security to achieve both our series A and B funding rounds in the last seven months of 2020. We added $75 million in new funding (bringing our total to $82 million) from our amazing VC partners – ICONIQ Growth, GGV Capital, YL Ventures, and Silicon Valley CISO Investments (SVCI) – we are advancing our mission to fix cloud security.
To solve fundamental cloud security problems for our clients and help fuel our growth, we more than doubled our team in the US, Israel, EMEA, and APAC. In addition, we expect to nearly triple our R&D team from our A round by the end of this year. In marketing, we went from a one-man show to a seven-strong, world-class team.
Along the way, we reached over 40 paying clients across many sectors, launched the second generation of our cloud security platform, and added new features to meet the evolving needs of those in the financial services and enterprise sectors.
We conducted extensive research and tested products for known vulnerabilities and risks from 540 software vendors, culminating in two reports. These spotlight growing public cloud security risks and virtual appliance security issues to help move the industry to a safer future.
We stood up for transparency as a core value of the cybersecurity industry – After receiving a cease-and-desist letter for posting a factual, hands-on comparison of Orca Security vs. Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, we encouraged a dialogue regarding the need for transparency as a core cybersecurity industry value.
Research Reports and Findings
Awards and Recognition
- 2020 SINET 16 Award Winner
- 2020 CISO Choice 50 Awards: Visionary Vendor
- TechTarget – Top 5 Cybersecurity Vendor to Watch
- Forbes – The Top 20 Cybersecurity Startups to Watch In 2021
- CRN – Emerging IT Security Vendors to Know
- CRN – The 10 Hottest Cloud Security Startups of 2020
- CRN – The 20 Coolest Tech Startups of 2020
- CBInsights – Cyber Defenders, Multi-Cloud Security
Funding Milestones
- Series A – $20.5 million in May
- Series B – $55 million in December
But the best recognition comes from our clients, many of whom participated in case studies and webinars to help spread the word that there’s now a better way to ensure public cloud security and compliance.
Sharing Research and Expertise
From sharing reports that highlight key cloud and virtual appliance security issues to Avi Shua speaking on podcasts and writing articles in Dark Reading, CPO Magazine, Cyber Defense Magazine, and more, Orca Security was honored to contribute our voice to the most pressing security conversations.
- Fox News radio podcast – Securing the Cloud: CEO Avi Shua of Orca Security
- TaskForce7 podcast – Why Are So Many Former 8200 Members Successful Entrepreneurs?
- Dark Reading (byline) – Why I’d Take Good IT Hygiene Over Security’s Latest Silver Bullet
- Cyber Defense Magazine (byline) – Ditch Legacy Approaches – Reimagine Cloud Security Based on Virtualization
- Dark Reading – Out-of-Date and Unsupported Cloud Workloads Continue as a Common Weakness
- Brilliance Security Magazine and podcast – The Orca Security 2020 State of Public Cloud Security Report
- CSOonline – Half of all virtual appliances have outdated software and serious vulnerabilities
- CPO Magazine (byline) – Orca Security Research: Top Virtual Appliance Vendors Neglect the Security of Their Products
- Cyber Defense Magazine (byline) – Securing the Weakest Links in Today’s Public Cloud Environments
- HelpNetSecurity – Public cloud environments leave numerous paths open for exploitation
- Toolbox Security (byline): How to Close the Door on New Cloud Attack Vectors
- BetaNews – Only eight percent of virtual appliances are free of vulnerabilities
- SecurityWeek – Study Finds 400,000 Vulnerabilities Across 2,200 Virtual Appliances
Fueling Growth
- CrunchBase – Orca Security Secures $20M Series A To Provide ‘Frictionless’ Cloud Security
- BetaNews – ‘SideScanning’ technology offers deeper multi-cloud visibility
- Security Week – Virtualized Cloud Visibility Firm Orca Security Raises $20.5 Million
- TechCrunch – Orca Security raises $55M for its cloud-native security platform
- sdxcentral – Orca Wins $55M for Cloud Security Fight Against Palo Alto Networks – SdxCentral
- SC Media – Orca aims to fix ‘fundamentally broken’ cloud security with latest funding round
Saying that it was a monumental year is an understatement—and this is just the beginning!