Irish-led Sonrai raises $50m for cloud cybersecurity platform

26 Oct 2021

Image: © estherpoon/Stock.adobe.com

Co-founded by Irishman Brendan Hannigan, Sonrai Security will use the funding to invest in R&D and expand sales globally.

New York start-up Sonrai Security has raised $50m in Series C funding to scale its cloud cybersecurity platform globally.

This comes almost exactly a year after its Series B funding round in October 2020, which saw the company raise $20m led by Menlo Ventures with participation from founding investor Polaris Partners and Series A lead investor Ten Eleven Ventures.

The Series C funding was led by cyber risk management company Istari, with investors Menlo Ventures, Polaris Partners, Ten Eleven Ventures and the New Brunswick Fund taking part. The round brought total funding raised by the company to $88m.

Sonrai was founded in 2017 by Irishman Brendan Hannigan and his business partner Sandy Bird.

Hannigan previously founded security intelligence software company Q1 Labs and led it until it was acquired by IBM, where he was appointed head of the security division. He is now CEO of Sonrai Security.

The start-up said it will use the new funding to accelerate R&D and expand sales and marketing for its platform globally.

“Our latest funding round supports our global expansion and ensures that our platform will continue to provide the most advanced multi-cloud security capabilities available in the market,” said Hannigan.

Cloud security a ‘key focus area’

Amit Jasuja, Istari’s chief portfolio officer, will join Sonrai’s board of directors following this investment.

“We are building our portfolio based around our clients’ most pressing cybersecurity needs,” he said. “Cloud security is one of their key focus areas and Sonrai’s best of breed platform is the perfect complement to our portfolio.”

Sonrai Dig, the company’s identity and data governance platform, automatically uncovers identity, data and cloud platform risks. It also continuously monitors to ensure new risks and unusual activity are quickly identified.

Hannigan is an experienced tech leader who is originally from Ireland but is now based in New York. Earlier this year, he told Siliconrepublic.com that the way in which technology value is created has changed, but the way in which it is secured has not been reimagined.

“The old ways of perimeters, firewalls and people-dominated security operations centres fail in the new world,” he said. “Sonrai Security has developed a security service for the new world – one which is optimised for the cloud, focused on identity and data, and that delivers automation for cloud and security teams.

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Vish Gain is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com