NetFoundry raises $12M to enhance secure networking
NetFoundry has secured an investment of $12 million in a funding round led by cybersecurity venture capital firm SYN Ventures.
This marks the company's first venture capital funding, despite already providing services to eight of the top ten US banks and supporting critical infrastructure operations across three continents.
NetFoundry offers a secure networking platform built on a secure-by-design software model, which aims to replace traditional infrastructure dependencies and supplementary security solutions with military-grade security embedded natively within software.
"This is the iPhone moment for secure networking. NetFoundry's approach is revolutionary in that it enables military-grade security but with the speed and extensibility of software. Organizations can no longer tolerate the trade-offs of WAN/SASE/firewall architecture – that old model is shredded by an AI-accelerated world," Galeal Zino, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NetFoundry, said.
NetFoundry's technology is used by two of the top five companies on the Fortune 500 list and has been integrated with solutions from firms including Arrow, Cap Gemini, CERM, Digibee, EdgeX Foundry, FreeWave, IBM, Intrusion, LVT, Marposs, Microsoft, Oracle, Ozone, Redfaire, TZ, and the US military.
The company focuses on providing secure networking as software to both enterprise IT departments and product providers. NetFoundry's zero trust networking can be embedded within third-party products under an original equipment manufacturer model, similar to the approach made famous by "Intel Inside."
Financial services organisations that require both advanced security and rapid deployment have been among the early adopters of NetFoundry's secure-by-design, network-as-code model. The company said the need for such technologies is increasing for all businesses as artificial intelligence continues to shape operational landscapes.
"Finance firms benefited from being the infrastructure-as-code leaders, and are now taking the final step by completing the platform with network-as-code deployments. NetFoundry's reinvention of secure networking was the missing link – the way to complete the journey to an infrastructure-independent, secure-by-design enterprise platform." Josh Schertzer, formerly Chief Technology Officer of enterprise technology at Blackstone, said.
NetFoundry supports a "develop once, deploy anywhere, deliver everywhere" strategy, enabling distributed computing without the need to directly manage complex network layers. This approach is intended to support IT teams as they look to expand and decentralise their computing resources.
"Only software can keep up with software. Dependencies on infrastructure, IP addresses, underlay networks, specific clouds, and firewall ACLs are barriers to business velocity, security, and agility. By eliminating these barriers, NetFoundry enables enterprises to simplify, secure, and accelerate digital transformation," Dan Burns, Partner at SYN Ventures and former Chief Executive Officer of Optiv, said.
NetFoundry's published case studies document a range of deployments, from just-in-time zero-trust networking for financial services and military drones to solutions for industrial automation. Unlike Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) clouds, which often divert and decrypt sensitive data, NetFoundry's solution delivers end-to-end encryption, with encryption keys kept at the network endpoints for both on-premises and cloud-native operations.
The company's approach targets businesses looking to balance strong security with the flexibility and speed provided by cloud-native and software-defined solutions. NetFoundry claims its network-as-code model reduces the operational overhead that comes with legacy WAN, firewall, or SASE architectures.
