ShardSecure, inventor of Microshard technology that mitigates data security and privacy risks in the cloud, has closed an oversubscribed $11M Series A funding round led by Grotech Ventures, with significant participation from Gula Tech Adventures and KPMG LLP, as well as existing investors Tom Noonan, EPIC Ventures, and Industrifonden.
As part of the investment, Steve Fredrick, General Partner of Grotech Ventures, and Ron Gula, Co-Founder and President of Gula Tech Adventures and Co-Founder and former CEO of Tenable (TENB), will join ShardSecure’s board.
ShardSecure has experienced strong customer traction since releasing Microshard technology in late 2020. Microsharding excels at making sensitive data unintelligible in the wrong hands, enabling that data for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments so that companies can evolve their data practices and maintain business continuity.
The three-step Microshard process to shred, mix, and distribute data renders data unintelligible and of no value to attackers, drastically mitigating the risk of data compromise. As a result, ShardSecure’s valuation continues to double every year — as demonstrated by its strong Series A round.
“I am impressed with how ShardSecure’s innovative data security platform can protect the most sensitive resources in the cloud environment,” said Sajawal Haider, Managing Director and CISO at Oak Hill Advisors, a $57B global investment firm. “Oak Hill is pleased to be partnering with ShardSecure as the company grows its customer footprint.”
ShardSecure’s key customers include major financial firms, healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations, global technology businesses, and companies in other regulated industries. As evidenced by its early adoption in these industries, Microshard technology allows clients to quickly and effectively secure their confidential data in the cloud. Advanced data protection abilities also add advanced security to SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365 and support secure cold storage migration from on-premises to the cloud.
“ShardSecure has positioned itself in the right place at the right time as an innovative solution to secure data in the cloud,” said Steve Fredrick, General Partner of Grotech Ventures. “Their product will continue to meet the growing market demand for a defense-in-depth data security platform in the cloud. We’re very excited about partnering with Bob and his team to help support their business as it scales.”
Among the primary innovations of Microshard technology is its self-healing data, which reverses unauthorized data deletion and tampering (including ransomware) for data at rest. Virtual clusters support high-availability and failover functionality within a cluster and among multiple clusters to help ensure that critical data at rest stays secure and available.
ShardSecure also supports business continuity through its unique approach of distributing Microshard data to multiple customer-provided storage locations and its RAID-5-like ability to recreate data impacted by storage service outages. This approach protects against the risk of data loss and allows business operations to continue unaffected during an outage.
“Data is a critical asset for every modern enterprise, particularly with the acceleration of cloud adoption. ShardSecure’s technology is an innovative solution to secure and protect data, offering a valuable extra layer of defense while enhancing performance and usability,” said Kyle Kappel, US Leader of Cyber Security at KPMG. “We look forward to collaborating with ShardSecure to help our clients secure their data, protect against ransomware attacks, and implement robust disaster recovery and business continuity processes. We are truly excited to be a part of this journey.”
“We are honored and humbled to be backed by well-known security VCs and cyber company unicorn builders including Steve, Ron, and Tom, and we’re pleased that our existing investors continue to invest in us. We’re also thrilled that KPMG, one of the world’s top cyber consulting and advisory firms, is joining our journey to secure sensitive data in the cloud as a strategic investor,” said Bob Lam, Co-Founder and CEO of ShardSecure.
The Series A funding will be used to further grow ShardSecure’s cloud data security platform — including continued product development and third-party product integrations — and expand its sales and marketing operations in North America and Europe.
About ShardSecure
ShardSecure is changing the nature of data security. It believes that all organizations can easily and securely enjoy the benefits of cloud adoption without surrendering control of their data. Inventors of patent-pending Microshard technology, ShardSecure cloud-enables sensitive data by desensitizing it in multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments. Learn more at shardsecure.com.
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