Corelight was founded by Dr. Vern Paxson (a Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Chief Scientist at Corelight), Robin Sommer (CTO) and Seth Hall (Chief Evangelist) to deliver network visibility solutions for cybersecurity built on an open source framework called Zeek (formerly Bro). Paxson began developing Zeek in 1995 when he was working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The software is now widely regarded as the gold standard for both NSM and network traffic analysis (NTA) and has been deployed by thousands of organizations around the world.
The provider of the powerful network traffic analysis (NTA) solutions for cybersecurity has now raised $50 million in its series C funding round. With this additional round of capital, the company will accelerate investments in product development, research, sales, and marketing with the aim of delivering new capabilities for network defense.
Commenting on the success, Jeff Horing, co-founder and managing director at Insight Partners – which led the round of funding together with its first capital investor, Accel – said: “Corelight recognizes that network data provides ground-truth evidence that security teams need to root out malicious activity inside their organizations.” “It is this unique data-centric approach that sets Corelight apart from other vendors in the security market space. As a result, we believe that Corelight has substantial opportunities to expand their portfolio and provide customers a fundamentally better foundation for their security programs. We look forward to partnering with the team as they build out that vision,” he added.
John Locke, partner at Accel, continued: “Corelight has quickly established itself as one of the foundational companies within network security with its passionate community of open source users and traction within some of the most discerning enterprise security teams globally. We’re thrilled to double-down on our investment and excited about the growth ahead.”
“What makes our data first security approach so powerful is the global community behind it,” said Greg Bell, CEO of Corelight. “That community generously contributes new detections, parsers, and other capabilities for the benefit of all defenders. In addition to helping Corelight accelerate commercial progress, the new investment will enable us to engage and serve our community at a higher level. Belief in this joint vision is a key driver for the partnership with Insight and Accel, two renowned and experienced firms.”
Joe Sullivan, CSO at Cloudflare, commenting on Corelight’s Zeek said: “Zeek is an important element of our network security posture and we’re excited to see what future capabilities unfold.”
Corelight has amplified the power of open source Zeek with a suite of enterprise features that dramatically simplify enterprise deployments, so organizations can spend more time on threat hunting and less time on system administration. These include out-of-the-box enterprise integrations, distributed sensor management, and data tuning capabilities that can reduce the downstream SIEM costs by 30% or more compared to a typical open source deployment. Corelight sensors are available in physical, virtual or cloud-based form factors to help fit the needs of customers’ network environments.
Corelight is now being used in production by some of the world’s largest organizations in both the public and private sectors.
The company has raised a total of $84 million to date, with investment from General Catalyst, Accel, Osage University Partners and Riverbed Technology Co-founder Dr. Steve McCanne in previous rounds. The company has more than doubled in size since its Series B in September 2018.
