Sookasa closes Series A

Sookasa has announced Series A round of funding, led by Accel Partners. Existing investors include First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and other VCs and angel investors. Sookasa is an innovator in compliance for popular cloud applications and mobile devices.

PRESS RELEASE

Sookasa, Inc., an innovator in compliance for popular cloud applications and mobile devices, today emerged from stealth mode to radically simplify the protection of sensitive files across popular cloud services and mobile devices. Sookasa is the first company to enable professionals to natively use their favorite cloud services, such as Dropbox and Gmail, and mobile devices, while transparently encrypting sensitive data and addressing regulations such as HIPAA and FERPA.

As part of the company launch, Sookasa also announced its Series A round of funding, led by top-tier venture capital firm Accel Partners, with continued participation from existing seed investors. The existing group of investors includes First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and other leading VCs and angel investors. The new funding will be used for continued development and to expand Sookasa’s traction in key regulated industries such as healthcare, education, legal and finance.

Cloud services such as Dropbox, Box and Gmail scatter and duplicate files across multiple devices and shared folders. This creates a significant challenge in regulated industries because the loss of a single device that is connected to a cloud account can cause a catastrophic data breach and significant legal liability. Current encryption solutions require heavy IT resources, restrict user freedom and significantly hurt user experience. With Sookasa, for the first time organizations have a self-service turnkey encryption and compliance solution that enables their employees to safely use their favorite mobile devices and cloud services. Files are encrypted anywhere they are placed, including on the cloud, mobile devices and desktops, and remain protected even when shared externally.

“Sookasa is uniquely positioned at the junction of cloud and mobile security,” said Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel Partners, who led the investment in Sookasa. “Sookasa is the first company to consumerize compliance and make it accessible to professionals at companies of all sizes. Accel believes in scalable low-touch services that create a network effect, and Sookasa brings these principles to a market dominated by legacy appliances and packaged software. Accel is excited to partner with Sookasa to create a new model for the next generation of data security companies.”

With today’s introduction, Sookasa also announced its solution launch of the Sookasa Compliance as a Service™, the industry’s first solution that controls and audits file accesses across cloud services, users and devices, while enabling users to leverage their favorite cloud services without noticing their files are being encrypted and decrypted. See accompanying solution launch announcement issued by Sookasa today at: [web link].

The idea for Sookasa was originally conceived by father and son researchers, Israel and Asaf Cidon, while Asaf was a PhD student in Stanford University working on cloud storage technologies. They were concerned to see that their files shared across the Atlantic were spread out to multiple cloud services and devices, without a way to centrally manage and track them. They realized that this poses an even greater challenge for businesses that have major data breach risks.

“There is a paradigm shift in the security market as content is rapidly moving from on-premise servers and desktops to cloud services and mobile devices,” said Asaf Cidon, Sookasa CEO and co-founder. “Unlike legacy security companies that protect infrastructure like networks or endpoints, Sookasa is laser-focused on protecting the content itself while preserving the user experience. Our Compliance as a Service is architected to operate across any cloud service, computer or mobile device.”

Sookasa was founded in 2012 in the Silicon Valley by experts in cloud security and storage. The founding team includes CEO Asaf Cidon (formerly of Google and Israeli Intelligence), Israel Cidon (formerly founder of Actona Technologies and Dean of Electrical Engineering at the Technion), Madan Gopal (formerly of Cisco and IBM), and Lior Gavish (formerly of Paypal).

The company is venture backed, with Accel leading its Series A round of funding. Sameer Gandhi from Accel Partners joins Sookasa’s board of directors with the investment. In addition, Kirk Bowman, who formerly held executive positions at VMware and Equallogic, joins as an independent board member. Advisors to the company include Taher ElGamal, CTO Security at Salesforce and the “father of SSL”.

About Sookasa
Sookasa is the industry’s first Compliance as a Service™ that transparently protects files across popular cloud services and mobile devices. Sookasa enables professionals to use their favorite cloud services, such as Dropbox and Gmail, and mobile devices, while transparently encrypting sensitive data and addressing regulations such as HIPAA and FERPA. The company is led by a team of academics, serial entrepreneurs and seasoned security veterans. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Sookasa is backed by Accel Partners and other top-tier investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital.