Cork’s Vaultree raises $3.3m for encryption-as-a-service tech

2 Nov 2021

Image: © Anthony Brown/Stock.adobe.com

With the new funding, Vaultree plans to continue developing its encrypted data protection product and to expand its team.

Vaultree, a Cork-based cybersecurity company, has raised $3.3m in seed funding for its data security tools.

The funding round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that focuses on cybersecurity start-ups. Other backers include Enterprise Ireland, Unpopular Ventures, HBAN and John N Stewart, who is former chief security and trust officer at tech giant Cisco.

Vaultree was founded last year by a team of engineers and tech professionals. It is looking to build scalable, privacy-enhancing tech and encryption-as-a-service tools.

Its platform, which was launched last month, uses enhanced searchable symmetric encryption and fully homomorphic encryption technologies. The aim is to help highly regulated organisations access and use their data, without having to reveal encryption keys or the data content to a tech or cloud provider.

“We have achieved a major patent-pending technological breakthrough, which enables us to differentiate our solution in the competitive space with a solution approach that finally frees companies from making trade-offs between security and performance,” said Ryan Lasmaili, co-founder of Vaultree.

“This is rare to find in the complex cybersecurity solution field, which makes Vaultree interesting to investors and customers.”

With the fresh funding, Vaultree plans to continue its development of an end-to-end encrypted data protection product. It also plans to expand its team, hiring engineering, cryptography, sales and customer-facing staff.

Lasmaili told The Irish Times that the seed funding round was oversubscribed and that Vaultree is now looking to raise a “significant” Series A round in the near future.

The start-up is working with a number of advisers, including Stewart, Microsoft chief security adviser Sarah Armstrong-Smith, Nubank chief information security officer David Currie, and Cisco security channels leader Leticia Gammill.

“To reduce cyberattacks and data breaches requires a fully encrypted and scalable solution, suitable for any sized business,” said Armstrong-Smith.

“Vaultree has developed an innovative solution to help meet these needs and work toward creating a safer digital world through data encryption.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Sarah Harford was sub-editor of Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com