When looking for cyber security you can’t just be like hand sanitizer and protect 99%; you need to be good 100% of the time. While most companies cannot say this about themselves, Fireglass can. With an inspiring conception of the company, their years of experience and recent funding show what this young company is capable of in years to come.
Today, AlleyWatch sits down with Fireglass CEO and cofounder Guy Guzner to discuss the recent funding as well at what separates Fireglass from the pack.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Fireglass raised $20M in Series A funding which was our first funding round. Our investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Singtel Innov8 and co-founder of Imperva and Trusteer Mickey Boodaei and co-founder of Trusteer, Rakesh Loonkar
Tell us about your product or service.
Fireglass is revolutionizing enterprise network security by eliminating common attack vectors including websites, emails, documents and application traffic. The Fireglass Threat Isolation Platform executes and renderers all potentially malicious content remotely and sends a safe visual feed to the end-user without compromising user experience. Through this, Fireglass isolates all known and unknown threats and malware to offer a future-proof solution. Fireglass can be deployed to protect end-users from threats including drive-bys and ransomware, and can also be deployed to protect web applications from threats such as Cross-site scripting and automated attacks. Fireglass is compatible with any OS, browser or device, easily deployed on-premises or offered as a cloud service, requires no endpoint installation and scales linearly. In addition to enhancing current security measures which time and again prove to be insufficient, Fireglass can also simplify IT operations by consolidating solutions (e.g. secure web gateways and WAFs) and minimizing alerts and investigations.
What inspired you to start the company?
After over 15 years working at leading enterprise security vendor, developing products that are trying to stay ahead of the attacker, I realized that only a completely different approach would be successful. When I met my co-founder and CTO, Dan Amiga, a military intelligence veteran, he was researching military grade security concepts for isolation, and I knew we were on the right path.
How is it different?
Traditional security solutions, including signature-based detection, Secure Web Gateways (SWGs) and sandboxes, rely on the ability to tell good from bad, an approach proven to be ineffective in keeping threats at bay. Fireglass assumes all web content and activities are potentially malicious, and acts as an air gap between users and web applications to completely eliminate threats, while still providing a seamless user experience.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We are targeting the network security market that is above $10B.
Why another Cybersecurity company?
We don’t see ourselves as just another cyber security; what Fireglass is doing is revolutionary. Fireglass eliminates all common attack vectors and makes it virtually impossible for attackers to breach organizations and users. While this sounds nearly impossible, our hand-picked team of security superstars is working day and night to provide our customers with a game changing technology.
What was the funding process like?
We had a lot of inbound interest from top VCs, strategic investors and private investors that know the security industry well and understand that Fireglass is developing a paradigm to cyber security.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
One of the biggest challenges with most fund raising is to keep it a short and well organized process in order to minimize attention away from building the company.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ve just announced our product. In the near future we’re planning to focus on Sales & Marketing and continue developing our IP.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
I love Momofuku Ko. I think they have a very innovative and creative approach and have really changed the way people view fine dining.
