IID Secures $8M From Bessemer Ventures

PRESS RELEASE

TACOMA, Wash. – November 5, 2013 – IID, securing the Internet with shared cyberintelligence, today announced it has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP). IID will use the investment to accommodate growing demand for its cyberintelligence collaboration platform, ActiveTrust, which is selectively available today. ActiveTrust enables enterprises and government agencies to combat the rising frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks by sharing cyber incident data in real time. The funding is the first ever institutional investment for IID, which is headquartered in Tacoma, Wash., and has 65 employees.

"This financing is important in helping IID scale and we're enthusiastic about partnering with the BVP team, which brings unrivaled expertise founding and funding dozens of cloud-based security pioneers, such as VeriSign, Postini and LifeLock," said IID Co-founder and CEO Lars Harvey. "I'm extremely proud of the steady growth that has spanned nearly two decades at IID, and it's exciting to impact how Fortune 1000 companies and large government agencies share threat intelligence moving forward."

Despite the growing danger posed by cybercrime, information vital to stemming the tide is highly fragmented across the Internet today. Pockets of data about threat activity are siloed within the repositories of individual enterprises, government organizations, vendor networks and research institutions. IID's ActiveTrust platform solves the problem by offering a threat intelligence solution that automatically aggregates, validates and exchanges actionable threat data across thousands of contributing sources, enabling organizations to power their existing security infrastructure with more robust intelligence feeds. This collaborative approach means enterprises and government agencies can increase the scope, quality and timeliness of their cybersecurity efforts, while freeing up valuable human resources.

IID itself is not new to the realm of cybersecurity. The company has detected and mitigated cyberthreats for the Fortune 500 and leading government agencies since 1996, when the company was founded. Leveraging its wide-ranging and deep ties within the cybersecurity community, IID began rolling out its ActiveTrust platform in early 2013.

"Heeding the President's call on the private and public sectors to share cyber threat intelligence, BVP set out to find and fund the best team and technology to enable safe, real-time collaboration," explained VeriSign founder and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners David Cowan. "With so many mega-enterprises and federal agencies joining ActiveTrust, it was clear to us that IID has already developed the most important security intelligence exchange on the planet."

"Despite all of the recent advancements in online security, it is mind-boggling that threat intelligence sharing is stuck in the '90s--conducted primarily by email, and limited to peer and industry groups," said IID Co-founder, President and CTO Rod Rasmussen. "With our threat sharing platform, we are automating at scale what IID has been doing for years--collecting, analyzing and feeding data into enterprises' wide array of security tools--and providing a social network for enterprises to collaborate against the latest threats."

A sneak peek at ActiveTrust can be found at www.internetidentity.com/activetrust-network.

IID was advised throughout the transaction by Seattle-based investment bank Evolution Capital Advisors.

About IID

IID empowers threat intelligence sharing for enterprises and governments in a trusted environment that reaches beyond limited trust groups. The company aggregates and analyzes widely sourced threat data, and delivers actionable intelligence to facilitate the protection of assets, brands and users. Top financial firms, the largest government agencies, and leading e-commerce companies, social networks and ISPs leverage IID to detect and mitigate threats. For more information about IID, go to www.internetidentity.com.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage, hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, Cambridge, New York, Mumbai, Bangalore, Herzliya and Sao Paolo. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, Skype, CornerstoneOnDemand, Pinterest, Box and Twilio. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public -- last year alone BVP had 5 IPOs, 7 M&A exits, and 20 new investments. Learn more at bvp.com and twitter.com/BessemerVP.

About Evolution Capital Advisors, LLC

Evolution Capital Advisors is a Seattle-based boutique Investment Bank specializing in entrepreneurial stage companies within information, mobile/digital media, and energy technology. For more information, visit: www.evolutioncapadv.com.