Highlights:

  • Versa Networks says that its SASE platform can be set up 20 times faster than other competing technologies.
  • According to Versa, the firewall has features that cannot just detect any breach attempt but also block malicious network connections.

Versa Networks Inc, a recognized leader of single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platforms, announced that it had received USD 120 million in new funding.

Versa announced that BlackRock was the lead investor in the funding round. Silicon Valley Bank also took part. The recent round of funding will bring Versa’s total raised amount to more than USD 316 million. The funding is being termed as an investment that focuses on “setting Versa on its planned IPO path.”

Versa sells SASE, a secure access service edge platform used by Capital One Financial Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and tens of thousands of other businesses. A SASE platform is a product that merges both networking features and security tools. It can set up network connections between a company’s cloud environments, data centers, and other assets worldwide and secure the network traffic between them.

In the past, companies have used different tools to handle networking and cybersecurity tasks. Versa’s SASE platform consolidates everything into a single product to make the work easier for IT teams. Administrators must just set up and maintain one product instead of several.

Eliminating the complexity that comes with managing multiple networking and cybersecurity tools smoothens several other tasks, such as the process of connecting new branch offices to the corporate network. Versa Networks says that its SASE platform can be set up 20 times faster than other competing technologies. Furthermore, the startup guarantees that it will ease improvements in the availability and performance of applications.

With Versa’s SASE platform, companies can establish network connections between cloud data centers, offices, and other locations. The platform can be deployed on cloud infrastructure, on-premises hardware, or both.

Versa provides several cybersecurity features as part of its platform’s set of features. One built-in tool lets employees access business applications through the use of secure network connections. Another tool looks at how business apps are used to find signs of possible security breaches and find cloud services that were set up without administrators’ permission.

An in-built firewall has more cybersecurity features. According to Versa, the firewall has features that cannot just detect any breach attempt but also block malicious network connections.

The startup’s platform also has another set of features that help protect employee devices from hacking campaigns. When a worker visits a website, the startup’s platform can open the website on a cloud-based server instead of the worker’s browser. This prevents any malware in the code of a website from getting to user devices.

Versa plans to use the USD 120 million from BlackRock and Silicon Valley Bank to expand its platform capabilities to more useful places. The startup will also use the funds to get new customers.

Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ahuja of Versa Networks said, “This funding will allow us to expand our go-to-market and accelerate new innovations that will further expand the market opportunity for us as a company.”

Versa Networks faces competition from several other venture-backed SASE startups, such as Cato Networks Inc., which closed a USD 200 million funding round last year. In the past few years, both public companies, Cloudflare Inc. and Palo Alto Networks Inc. have also made competing products. Versa cites research from Gartner Inc. that says the SASE segment is on track to become a USD 15 billion market by 2025.