Big Data

Ordr raises $16.5 million for network-level cybersecurity


In this day and age, enterprises can’t take a traditional IT approach to security — or so claims Ordr, a Santa Clara, California-based startup developing a network-level cybersecurity platform. It contends that the client-side security suites installed on legacy workstations, laptops, and handhelds are a poor fit for “hyper-connected” enterprise environments with smart door locks, digital signage, and hundreds (or thousands) of other internet-connected systems. And it has a point. Kaspersky Lab reported a threefold year-over-year increase in smart gadget hacks in the first half of 2018, with one malware variant managing to infect 57,000 wireless security cameras in a week. And with 30 billion devices expected to be connected by 2020, the problem only stands to worsen.

Ordr, which emerged from stealth today, recently secured $16.5 million in series A financing from TenEleven Ventures, with contributions from Wing Ventures and Unusual Ventures. (TenEleven Ventures’ Alex Doll will join the company’s board of directors as part of the round.)

The company’s platform — Systems Control Engine, or SCE — autonomously identifies, regulates, and protects local networks by classifying attached systems and applying traffic flow and access policies accordingly. It taps machine learning algorithms and data analytics to build a baseline understanding of devices’ behavior and flag suspicious events in real time. It also deploys in “minutes” on top of existing network and security infrastructure without adding additional overhead.

“The Ordr team has built a cutting-edge, yet elegantly simple, solution to real-world problems that impact every enterprise in any industry,” Greg Murphy, previously senior vice president of business operations and strategy at Aruba Networks, said in a statement. “Our key insight is that IT, security, and operational groups don’t have the resources to touch all of these new devices, and they definitely don’t need more tools that generate thousands of security alarms. They need closed-loop, actionable solutions to prevent incidents, not react to them, and that’s exactly what Ordr provides.”

Ordr competes with the likes of Israeli startup Axonius, whose product similarly automates networked device management and assessment, and Claroty, which recently raised $60 million for its industrial control network-targeted cybersecurity suite. That’s not to mention Red Balloon Security, an embedded systems security provider that counts HP among its clients.

But Gnanaprakasam Pandian, who cofounded Ordr with Sheausong Yang and who serves as its chief product officer, believes that the company is poised for growth in key verticals such as health care, manufacturing, distribution, and retail, where mission-critical legacy networks conducive to an automated, set-it-and-forget-it solution like SCE proliferate. There’s certainly a lot of money to go around — the global cybersecurity market is expected to reach $181.77 billion by 2021, according to Zion Market Research.

“The volume and diversity of enterprise devices is growing exponentially,” said Pandian, who serves as chief product officer of Ordr. “Yet there has been no analogous change in the way organizations control their network and security infrastructure. Our founding team spent decades developing those technologies and understood their capabilities. We knew we could add a new class of intelligence to systems from a spectrum of leading vendors, effectively boosting their ability to deliver true security for the new hyper-connected enterprise. We are enabling an infrastructure evolution without requiring any new infrastructure investment.”

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