CipherCloud

History

CipherCloud was founded in 2010 by Pravin Kothari, who previously co-founded ArcSight. The company launched in February 2011 and worked solely in Salesforce.com environments initially. It added Amazon Web Services integration in 2011. CipherCloud raised $1.4 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz later that year. CipherCloud released its Gmail encryption solution in June 2012. By September 2012 CipherCloud's platform could also encrypt Force.com, Chatter, Microsoft Office 365. It also launched Connect AnyApp, which allowed users to "simply specify fields on Web pages to be encrypted," and data format and operations would be preserved.

CipherCloud closed a $30 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures in December 2012. Deutsche Telekom also participated in the funding round through T-Ventures, the telecommunications company's venture capital arm. John M. Jack, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former CEO of Fortify Software, joined the CipherCloud board following the investment. The company opened its European headquarters in London, England in the same month. CipherCloud added an Australian headquarters in 2013.

In February 2013, CipherCloud joined Box Inc. (formerly Box.net), an online file sharing and cloud-content management service, to bring CipherCloud's encryption to file-sharing and file-hosting services such as Box. In January 2014, CipherCloud acquired CloudUp Networks. CloudUp Networks developed software that helped users track data as it moved through cloud environments and restricted that data from leaving the cloud without authorization.

In April 2013, CipherCloud filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice and defamation complaint against Stack Exchange Network for its users posting a discussion titled "How is CipherCloud doing homomorphic encryption?", which suggested that the company used "deterministic encryption". CipherCloud claimed that the post contained copyrighted marketing material to criticize the company. The takedown complaint was dismissed, which generated further interest in the company's encryption.

In April 2014 CipherCloud released a new product, CipherCloud for Cloud Discovery. Cloud Discovery analyzes cloud applications, which enterprises use for visibility and determine the risk of applications within the organization. According to Forbes, Cloud Discovery analyzes cloud applications such as "CRM, finance, HR, IT management, file sharing, collaboration, and productivity."

In November 2014, the company announced closing its Series B funding round of $50 million. Transamerica Ventures led the round, joined by Delta Partners, and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and T-Ventures, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom.

Platform

CipherCloud's platform serves as a gateway that encrypts data in realtime before sending the data into a cloud environment via Searchable Strong Encryption (SSE) which has been validated by FIPS 140-2. The data is only decrypted when an authorized user retrieves data from the cloud and the data is returned. Encryption keys are stored locally, never leave the user’s site and are not shared with the cloud provider. The platform is also capable of using tokenization, which is the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-sensitive equivalent. It also offers data loss and malware detection and monitoring for cloud environments.

Recognition

In June 2016, CipherCloud was awarded "Best Cloud Computing Security Solution" at the SC Magazine 2016 Awards.

In February 2014, Pravin Kothari was awarded the "CEO of the Year" at the 10th Info Security Global Excellence Awards.

In February and April 2013, CipherCloud received SC Magazine's Excellence Awards for the "Information Security Product of the Year" and the "Best Emerging Technology in Information Security".

In April 2011, Gartner named CipherCloud one of its "Cool Vendors" in cloud security.