Tanium Pushes 2014 Cybersecurity Venture Funding to $329M, Five Times 2013 Level

San Francisco-based cybersecurity-focused start-up Tanium announced yesterday a $90 mil. venture cash infusion from Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley powerhouse known for backing a long list of Internet and technology winners. The $90 mil. investment is the venture funding titan's second largest investment ever and continues a string of the firm's investments in cybersecurity companies, including Bluebox Security, Ciphercloud and Bromium.

Tanium, which describes itself as an "enterprise-scale real-time security and systems management company," has developed an approach to security management that it says collects and processes billions of metrics -- hardware configuration, software inventory, network usage, patch and update status and more -- across an organization's endpoints in real-time, providing instant visibility into operational issues to ward off security attacks.

Andreessen's big investment is the latest in a string of high-profile investment rounds across the growing ranks of cybersecurity technology start-ups.  According to our tally, thus far in 2014, cybersecurity firms have snagged $392 mil. in venture capital, over five times the level of the estimated $70 mil. in cybersecurity related venture deals in 2013.  (See table below).

At this point, total recent venture funding for cybersecurity tech providers is coming close to the $1 bil. mark. As the table below shows, since April 2012, venture funding for cybersecurity start-ups has totaled at least $818 mil.  At this rate, and with five months left in the year, that $1 bil. mark seems to be easily within reach.

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Cybersecurity Venture Funding Heats Up; Tally Tops At Least $630 Mil.

With the NSA, retail payment system breaches, Heartbleed vulnerabilities and other kinds of damaging digital security developments creating a vortex of never-ending headlines, it's little surprise that venture capitalists seem to be pouring money into cybersecurity start-ups at an accelerating pace.  In the past two days, Synack, a crowd-source vulnerability testing start-up founded by two former NSA analysts, and automated malware detection start-up Sentinel Labs announced they snagged a combined $18 mil. in capital from blue-chip Silicon Valley funders.

Synack got $7.5 mil. from Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, while Sentinel Labs got $12 mil. from a groupd of investors that includes Accel Partners and Granite Hill Capital Partners.  They join an impressive list of cybersecurity tech start-ups that have been catching the attention of tech's biggest money men since the beginning of 2012.

According to my list, which reflects only the funding announcements that have come across my radar screen, total cybersecurity-related tech start-up funding since over the past two years tops at least $630 mil.  This year alone, around $143 mil. in venture capital has flowed to cybersecurity companies and the pace seems to be picking up.

The tally below doesn't include the venture capital flowing into adjacent sectors, such as big data players, where a good deal of cybersecurity tech development occurs.  In all probability, the amount of venture capital flowing to new cybersecurity tech creation probably over the past two years probably nears the $1 bil. mark, if not higher.

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Cybersecurity Venture Funding Easily Tops Half Billion Dollars

On Monday, "stealth" mobile security start-up Bluebox became the latest in a string of ventures to announce major funding by blue-chip investors, snagging $18 million in a series B funding round that included powerhouses Andreessen Horowitz and Sun Microsystems.  That venture capitalists are pouring money into cybersecurity is no secret; but what's interesting is just how much money is flowing into these complex ventures.

I've assembled in the table below (the scroll bar on the right is helpful for viewing) some of the more prominent venture investments in cybersecurity start-ups since early 2012.  Altogether the companies in this table have raised over $500 million in venture funding and these investments are probably only a portion of venture capital money available to cybersecurity entrepreneurs.

On the heels of the Snowden revelations and the lawsuits flying in the wake of the Target breaches, investors have to be salivating at the prospects of getting in on the ground floor of what no doubt is, and will become, a hugely lucrative market with plenty of room for more entrants.

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