Encryption Firm Fortanix Raises $23 Million

Fortanix, a California-based company that specializes in encrypting data and applications, on Wednesday announced that it raised $23 million in a Series B funding round, which brings the total funding to date to $31 million.

The funding round was led by Intel Capital with participation from Foundation Capital and Neotribe. Intel Capital Director Sunil Kurkure will join Fortanix’s board of directors.

The newly obtained funds will be used to expand all sides of the company to meet increasing demand for its solutions.

Fortanix aims to address cloud security and data privacy challenges through a technology it calls Runtime Encryption. This technology is designed not only to protect data at rest and in motion, but also ensure that encryption keys, data and applications are protected while they are in use.

Runtime Encryption, which is powered by Intel’s SGX technology, runs applications in enclaves, which should protect data regardless if it’s used on premises, in hybrid environments or in remote clouds, even if the system has been compromised.

The company also offers a Self-Defending Key Management Service (SDKMS) that provides key management, hardware security module and tokenization capabilities.

Fortanix says its technology has been used by Fortune 100 companies worldwide and it’s present in IBM’s Cloud Data Shield and Equinix’s SmartKey product.

“Fortanix uniquely helps protect encryption keys, databases, machine learning algorithms, and containers to help secure organizations’ data in private, public and hybrid cloud environments,” said Ambuj Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Fortanix. “This new funding is a testament to the tremendous growth we’ve already experienced in 18 months since we first launched our product.”

Window Snyder, Chief Software Security Officer at Intel, commented, “Intel shares Fortanix’s goal of protecting data in-use during runtime. We look forward to continued collaboration to help solve the complex data privacy challenges our customers face, leveraging hardware-based protections such as Intel SGX.”

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Original author: Eduard Kovacs