Ottawa-based cyber-security company Interset has secured $10 million in funding that will “effectively double the size” of the company, CEO Dale Quayle said Wednesday.
San Francisco-based Toba Capital is the lead investor in this latest round, joined by fellow California investors Informatica and Anthem Venture Partners and Montreal’s Telesystem.
With cyber-security being a hot topic these days, Mr. Quayle said it was not difficult to generate interest in the company, as it was oversubscribed in this latest round of investment.
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“I can’t say I was beating them off with a stick, but we certainly had a lot of strong interest in the company, a lot of strong support,” he said.
The Interset Advanced Threat Detection Platform tracks and analyzes large swaths of data and sends a warning if unauthorized users are trying to access sensitive information. It is used in the manufacturing, defence, technology, energy and pharmaceuticals sectors.
While Mr. Quayle said there seems to be a security startup announcing funding every day, Interset’s Ottawa base helps the firm stand out.
“We have the advantage of a great community of folks who know analytics quite well coming out of Cognos, so we’re taking advantage of that talent pool and we’re applying that expertise to the security landscape,” he said from his California office.
While California is the centre of the security universe, according to Quayle, the bulk of Interset’s growth will be at its Bells Corners facility on Fitzgerald Road.
“We’re hiring, mostly developers, analytics is also high on our wishlist and then we’ll be expanding our sales and marketing efforts as well,” said Mr. Quayle, adding the staff in Ottawa should grow from 18 to 30 by the end of the year. There will also be some sales staff working in various centres across North America.
Mr. Quayle said the three-year-old company has spent the last 24 months building its product and getting its first customers on board.
“Now it’s about expanding that use case and making the world know about what we’re doing,” he said.
