Cork-based Dope Security lands $16m investment

23 Mar 2023

Cork city. Image: © Patryk Kosmider/Stock.adobe.com

With offices in California and Cork, the cybersecurity company will expand its team with this latest funding.

US cybersecurity company Dope Security has secured Series A funding of $16m in a round led by Google Ventures (GV), with participation from existing investors Boldstart Ventures and Preface.

Founded in 2021, Dope Security has offices in California and Cork. The company plans to use some of the funding to expand their engineering team in Cork.

“The Cork office is at the heart of Dope Security” said head of product Aidan Power.

“This new funding allows us to add to our already highly skilled team in Cork and allows us to build on the first-class product we have already created.”

Dope Security claims to be “the world’s only fly-direct secure web gateway (SWG)”.  An SWG is a set of security services that protect internet-enabled devices from web-based threats.

The California-headquartered company argues that their offering “disrupts the multibillion-dollar SWG market by performing security directly on the endpoint instead of routing traffic through stopover data centres”.

“This streamlined approach improves performance …, ensures that decrypted data never leaves the device, and improves reliability by eliminating external dependencies.”

“Nothing about a legacy SWG works for today,” said Dope Security founder and CEO Kunal Agarwal.

“The industry needs a new, efficient architecture designed for today with a user experience that puts the customer first. We’re excited to bring the first fly-direct SWG architecture to market with the Dope.swg.”

The latest funding brings the total raised by Dope Security to $20m. Sangeen Zeb, general partner at GV, will join the company’s board of directors.

Cybersecurity is an ever-increasing concern for businesses, with companies like Ferrari and Virgin Media TV suffering hacks in recent weeks.

According to an Aon survey, nearly 20pc of Irish companies experienced a cyberattack in 2022.

Aon’s head of cyber solutions for Ireland and the Nordics, Karl Curran, advises companies to take a “strategic approach” to cybersecurity.

He argues that by “taking a data-driven, circular approach to cyber resilience, business and IT leaders can come together to make better decisions that protect the future of their organisation and its people”.

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Rebecca Graham is production editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com