BALTIMORE — Healthcare compliance analytics company Protenus today announced an $11M investment to make its comprehensive health data auditing and privacy monitoring platform available to hospitals across North America. Protenus, founded in 2014, helps health systems keep one of their most sacred promises to patients: that sensitive health data remains safe, and is used appropriately.
Category: Enterprise
F-Prime leads $45M investment into Threat Stack
Threat Stack, provider of the industry’s most comprehensive intrusion detection platform for cloud, hybrid-cloud, and on-premise environments, today announced that it has raised $45 million in a Series C funding round led by F-Prime Capital Partners (the venture capital group associated with the parent company of Fidelity Investments), and Eight Roads Ventures, with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners, .406 Ventures, and Accomplice. As part of the funding, which brings the total investment in Threat Stack to more than $70 million, Gaurav Tuli of F-Prime will join Threat Stack’s Board of Directors, and Davor Hebel of Eight Roads Ventures will be an observer.
“The migration of computing workloads to public cloud environments represents the most significant shift in enterprise technology of the last 15 years. Cybersecurity continues to be the most acute challenge in the move to cloud, because cloud infrastructure is elastic and complex and attackers are operating at unprecedented speed and sophistication,” said Tuli. “Cloud security requires new approaches and new solutions, and Threat Stack is a rare security company that is purpose-built to address these unique challenges. Our investment will help drive continued innovation to meet the rapidly expanding market demand.”
On the heels of announcing 235% YoY revenue growth and 84% employee headcount expansion as of July, Threat Stack plans to grow its employee base another 30% by the end of 2017, while nearly doubling the size of its downtown Boston headquarters. The company is also committed to continued investment and innovation in Boston, as it simultaneously works to expand its footprint in North America and around the globe.
Protenus Profile: This Baltimore startup is trying to keep your hospital records safe from cyberattacks
Understandably so, it’s pretty easy for people to gain access to medical records in hospitals. Various physicians, nurses and, sometimes, medical students need to be able to easily update a patients’ record every time they treat them.
But, on the flip side, it’s pretty easy for outside hackers to gain access, too, as seen in the May WannaCry ransomware attacks that targeted 16 hospitals in the England as part of its hacks.
That’s where Baltimore-based startup Protenus comes in.
Founded by two Johns Hopkins University alumni, Protenus is part-health tech startup, part-cybersecurity company. Aimed at protecting data for healthcare providers, the startup tracks the activity of those who usually update a patients’ medical records — physicians, nurses, medical students — and creates a profile. If anything pops up that’s out of the usual, Protenus’ systems alert the appropriate parties.
“As medical students, we could just go in and edit those records, and that creates a real problem for healthcare because you have to give people more access and assume that they are doing it to help the patient,” said co-founder Nick Culbertson in an interview. “But, at the same time, it really depends on the individual to follow through on that in the industry.”
Protenus Extends Series A Funding Round
Protenus, a patient protection solution aimed at preventing health data breaches, has undergone a $3 million extension of its Series A funding round, led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures with participation from F-Prime Capital Partners and existing investor LionBird Venture Partners.
The new investment will be used to bolster its product, expand its offerings and accelerate sales growth.
The move comes as many hospitals have pivoted to using electronic health records, potentially making certain patient data more vulnerable. In 2016, over 27 million patient records were breached, according to the Protenus Breach Barometer. So far, 2017 has averaged more than one health data breach per day, with over 40 percent of these incidents attributable to insiders.
Third-Party Risk Management Provider RiskRecon Secures $12 Million in Series A Funding
SALT LAKE CITY – RiskRecon, a SaaS provider of objective, vendor security assessments and insights, today announced it has completed a $12 million Series A financing round led by Dell Technologies Capital with additional participation from F-Prime Capital Partners and existing investor General Catalyst. The RiskRecon platform dramatically improves third-party risk management by delivering transparent security measurements, analytics, and analyst-level insights. The funding will bolster product development and accelerate global sales growth.
With its proprietary data gathering technology, RiskRecon offers a unique depth, transparency and accuracy unavailable from security ratings services and vendor questionnaires. RiskRecon’s solution discovers a third-party vendor’s entire public IT footprint and produces actionable security assessments. RiskRecon provides not just summary information but also all supporting evidence, remediation priorities and vendor collaboration so that you can truly scale your third-party risk program.
Where Are They Now – Introducing Founders Diaries
Y Combinator Alum Castle Receives Funding To Prevent Account Takeovers
Castle, the industry’s first zero-configuration solution for account takeover (ATO) protection, announced today that the company has received $2 million in seed financing from First Round Capital with participation from F-Prime Capital, FundersClub and several notable angel investors. With this round of funding, Castle will expand into a complete account security suite for companies of all sizes.
Since graduating from Y Combinator six months ago, Castle has detected and mitigated more than 250,000 accounts across 15 million users from potential security threats. Hundreds of online applications are utilizing Castle, including e-commerce leader Rue La La.
“We take the security of our loyal members very seriously, and that means taking measures to proactively thwart potential threats,” said Bill Carson, VP of Technology at Rue La La.
ATO fraud is on the rise, having almost tripled in 2015. Given the increased value of online user data, the sophistication and capabilities of attackers is outpacing the development of protection tools. With attackers using botnets to direct millions of simultaneous login attempts, companies are struggling to find the human resources to keep up. In addition, most ATO vendors don’t have the ability to decipher the behavior between botnets and real humans. Consequently, the end-user (the customer) is burdened with complex password routines and multi-factor authentication when attempting to access accounts.
F-Prime’s David Jegen on tech disruption in the restaurant industry
Square opened its point-of-sale platform to competitors. There are rumors that IBM will buy Revel.
For anyone following the changes in payments and the restaurant industry, these are interesting strategic moves. Many of us have tried new services, like online food ordering, subscription meals and signing with your finger on a tablet-based point-of-sale system; but the reality is that we are still in the early phases of restaurant industry disruption.
I believe that’s about to change. In a few years we will look back on these announcements as a major shift in the pace of disruption and the time we started to “cross the chasm” into a chapter of rapid deployment, consolidation and breakaway winners.
Recurly CEO Dan Burkhart on how to eliminate subscription friction
Merchants and consumers benefit from relationships that stretch out for a long time, with recurring payments, trust and knowledge of just what the consumer is getting for that commitment. Easier said than done. In the latest Topic TBD, Recurly CEO Dan Burkhart tells Karen Webster what it will take to eliminate “subscription friction.”
Recurly report offers insights on subscription retail programs
It doesn’t matter if they sell snacks, cosmetics or a collection of nerdy knick-knacks – subscription retail programs have taken the market by storm. There’s not a retailer out there that wouldn’t jump at the chance to automate and optimize the steady revenue that these services provide, but with such eagerness to enter the race, some merchants often forget that while subscription programs may seem easy, they’re far from a set-it-and-forget-it type of doing business.
On the contrary, a new research report from subscription management firm Recurly broke down all the ways retailers are finding their ways in the wide world of subscription retail. To reach its findings, Recurly examined a sample set of 25 million transactions that occurred in 2015. Of these, 24.1 percent comprised B2B sales of subscription plans, while the majority 72.9 percent were B2C (with the remaining 3 percent occupying both categories). The report also found that 90 percent of physical goods transactions are in the B2C category.