Andreessen Horowitz Invests $30 Million in CipherCloud Cloud Security

Two-year-old cloud security company CipherCloud has big plans for building out its staff, its channel and its portfolio of cloud security services after it secured $30 million in funding from venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, which is backed by Internet software pioneers Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Since being founded in 2010, CipherCloud has focused on providing cloud encryption products to its customers. Recently, the company added content-aware encryption capabilities to its CipherCloud Gateway 3.5 product. Now CipherCloud has plans to move ahead and accelerate its product portfolio and hire much-needed staff.

The investment in CipherCloud marks Andreessen Horowitz’s first foray into the cloud security market. It’s not CipherCloud’s first external investors, though, but it is the company’s first major round of venture capital financing. Other investors in the cloud security company include Index Ventures and T-Systems.

“This is a perfect opportunity for CipherCloud to come in and really drive a solution to make customers more comfortable with moving their information to cloud,” Paige Leidig, senior vice president at CipherCloud, told Talkin’ Cloud.

CipherCloud has grown its business significantly in its first two years of operation. It currently has more than 40 enterprise customers across 10 industries and in eight different countries. Leidig said CipherCloud protects more than 1.2 million cloud apps users and more than 100 million customer records.

With the new VC investment, this might afford CipherCloud some breathing room — and, more importantly, the ability to hire talent to continue building the company. After all, without people making things happen, there’s only so big and fast a company can grow.

Leidig said the investment will help the team to dramatically accelerate its growth.

With a hybrid sales model made up of one part direct sales and one part channel sales through strategic partners and implementation partners, the company’s acceleration may present additional opportunities for channel partners and cloud brokers to get involved in the cloud security and encryption market.