Boston-based endpoint security startup, Barkly, today announced that it has closed a $12.5 million Series A financing round, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and including Sigma Prime Ventures. Barkly has now raised a total of $17 million since the company was co-founded in 2013 by Mike Duffy and Jack Danahy, longtime colleagues, information security industry veterans and serial entrepreneurs. The funding will be used to expedite the company's recruiting, product development, and go-to-market initiatives in the healthcare and financial services industries.
'We've built Barkly to bring advanced protection to the endpoint systems of the thousands of organizations that find themselves unprotected from modern sophisticated attacks, and who cannot afford to hire teams of experts to manage complex, expensive solutions,' said Duffy, Barkly's co-founder and CEO.
Redefining the expectations of endpoint security
Barkly enters the information security market at a time when 62 percent of successful cyber attacks breach small and mid-sized companies. These statistics confirm that existing endpoint security solutions for these markets do not provide the protections necessary, nor the simplicity required for universal adoption and use.
By contrast, IT administrators with little or no security background can easily install Barkly on any number of devices using existing systems management tools. Attacks are automatically stopped in real-time without administrator interaction, and messages can be sent to end users to educate them about their mistake. For example, if an employee inadvertently clicks on a malicious link in his/her email, which subsequently attempts to install malware on the user's machine, Barkly will immediately interrupt the installation, notify the IT administrator and educate the user. Notifications happen in real-time and are delivered on both desktop and mobile devices, so administrators can take action anytime, anywhere.
'The endpoint is the most common attack entry point in any organization,' said Danahy, Barkly's co-founder and CTO. 'Even so, security has not evolved meet the challenge there. Large companies invest in massive data gathering and analytics, while smaller companies suffer with insufficient protection. We purposefully designed Barkly so that any IT administrator, at any company, could implement advanced security and be confident in the safety and productivity of their workforce, with minimal oversight. That's the beauty of Barkly.'
Breakthrough technology making stronger security simple
Barkly combines a proprietary, high performance, local protection agent with SaaS based reporting and management to provide real time defense against modern malware, including zero-day and polymorphic attacks. Powered by advanced behavioral analytics, the Barkly agent is invisible to both end users and attackers, and is unique in its speed and simplicity.
'We've seen countless endpoint security solutions that are focused on the Fortune 1000s but are too complicated for most other companies to consume. We're excited to back Barkly's leaders as they deliver a new form of endpoint security that's simple to deploy and manage,' said Harry Weller General Partner at NEA. 'Both end users, and IT administrators want to be protected, but they also want to get back to work. Barkly lets them do both - quickly and simply.'
Barkly anticipates general availability in Q1 2016. For more information on Barkly or to request a demo, visit http://www.barklyprotects.com and follow them on Twitter @barklyprotects.
About Barkly
Barkly is reinventing endpoint security. Based in Boston, Barkly identifies and stops modern sophisticated attacks on endpoint devices without sacrificing employee performance or productivity. Its speed and simplicity allows IT administrators to install, monitor, and customize reporting with efficiency and ease. Barkly was co-founded in 2013 by Mike Duffy and Jack Danahy, longtime colleagues, information security industry veterans, and serial entrepreneurs and is backed by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Sigma Prime Ventures. For more information on Barkly or to sign up for its early access program, visit http://www.barklyprotects.com and follow @barklyprotects on Twitter.