Solera Networks Secures $7 Million in New Funding

Solera Networks, provider of network forensics software solutions, has raised an additional $7 million in Series B venture funding, led by new investor Allegis Capital. Solera Networks’ existing investor, Canopy Ventures, is also participating in the round.

Proceeds from the funding will be used to accelerate growth in sales and marketing activities, including opening the company’s new office in Washington, DC and expansion of its Japanese operations.

Solera Networks President and CEO Steve Shillingford said: "We’ve always believed that today’s information assurance strategies are missing a fundamental component — the ability to go back in time to quickly find the source of a breach, remediate the failure, and fortify the network. We see this funding as validation for the need to shift toward planning for these inevitable failures by investing in network forensics solutions like those from Solera Networks."

Solera Networks has made significant advancements in high-speed network forensics solutions for both virtual and physical networks, including technology to capture, index, search, and replay all network traffic. The company’s solutions are unmatched in speed and scalability and have been previously demonstrated at Supercomputing ’08 in a real-world testing lab involving live network traffic. Additionally, Solera Networks has certified its performance with Meircom and in numerous live customer deployments.

"We can expect to see more aggressive attacks targeting vulnerabilities that have been recently classified, but for which a remedy is still under development," said Nick Selby, Vice President and Research Director of the Enterprise Security Practice at industry analyst firm The 451 Group. "Network forensics technologies, like those from Solera Networks, can replay past network events in full fidelity and help identify the scope of the exploit. Swift identification leads to protection against further exposure."

Solera Networks will showcase its latest solution at RSA in San Francisco, April 20-23.

"We are very pleased to join Allegis Capital in this second round of financing for Solera Networks," said Ron Heinz, Managing Director of Canopy Ventures. "Solera Networks has combined a strong management team with excellent technology in the exciting growth market of network forensics. We believe their opportunity to serve customers in global markets is very compelling."

"Despite best efforts to protect information assets, there will always be instances where predetermination and prevention isn’t possible," said Spencer Tall, Managing Director of Allegis Capital. "Organizations must shift their focus to incident response, supported by comprehensive network forensics. Determining the scope of an event is key, followed by remediation and fortification. This is where Solera Networks’ open architecture, support for any network, and easy-to-use forensic applications fill the gap in today’s network security platforms. It’s a very exciting market opportunity."

Spencer Tall and Robert Ackerman, Managing Director and Co-Founder from Allegis Capital, will join the Solera Networks Board of Directors.