Duo Security Raises $12 Million in Series B Funding Led by Benchmark

PRESS RELEASE

ANN ARBOR, MICH. – September 22, 2014 – Duo Security, the leader in cloud-based two-factor authentication, today announced the company has raised $12 million in Series B funding, led by Benchmark, a leading venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley. Duo Security will leverage the funding to address the emerging security challenges faced by businesses of all shapes and sizes, who struggle to secure their users against a breach in a modern IT environment. Additional investors that participated in this funding round include Google Ventures, True Ventures and Radar Partners.

“Dug Song and Jon Oberheide are the kind of passionate and ambitious entrepreneurs Benchmark is proud to back and work alongside,” said Matt Cohler, general partner at Benchmark and Duo Security board member. “Smartphone proliferation, the shift in IT environments to the cloud, and business users’ increased expectations for consumer-grade enterprise software products give Duo Security the opportunity to lead and change the face of the security market in a post-firewall world."

In the last few years, traditional IT environments and the way users access corporate services and data has been disrupted through the rapid adoption of cloud and mobile technologies. When services hosted in the cloud are accessed by users from BYOD mobile endpoints, the ability to secure such access is both increasingly challenging and important. Malicious attackers have exploited such weaknesses, resulting in daily headlines of massive breaches across all kinds of organizations. In response, organizations have turned to two-factor authentication as an effective security technology to prevent credential theft and breach.

To date, Duo Security’s two-factor authentication service has provided the security foundation for over 5,000 organizations to protect their distributed users and distributed infrastructure. The Series B funding will fuel Duo Security’s growth and enable the company to expand its product portfolio with additional security technologies to protect user access of corporate services and data.

“We’ve always had ambitions beyond two-factor authentication to build a unified security platform that empowers the mid-market to appropriately protect themselves,” said Jon Oberheide, CTO and co-founder of Duo Security. “We’re on a mission to democratize effective security technologies for everyone, not just the Fortune 500.”

“We are incredibly excited to welcome Matt and Benchmark to the Duo Security team as we work to meet the challenges of protecting our customers’ users, devices, and services,” said Dug Song, CEO of Duo Security. “With this additional financing, we can continue to scale our sales, marketing, and product development to build a strong security solution to protect organizations worldwide.”

Duo Security is primarily based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has recently expanded operations on the East and West coasts. For more information on Duo Security, visit https://www.duosecurity.com and follow @duosec on Twitter.

About Duo Security
Duo Security provides cloud-based two-factor authentication to more than 5,000 organizations worldwide, including Facebook, Etsy, Random House, Paramount Pictures, Box, Toyota, Yelp, and Threadless. In as little as fifteen minutes, Duo Security’s innovative and easy-to-use technology can be deployed to protect users, data, and applications from breaches, credential theft and account takeover. Try it for free at www.duosecurity.com.

About Benchmark (http://www.benchmark.com)
Benchmark’s mission is to back great entrepreneurs who are changing the world. The venture capital partnership is privileged to work alongside men and women who are taking big ideas and transforming them into successful companies. Benchmark focuses on early-stage ventures in the general areas of mobile, social and cloud computing and is comprised of five equal general partners who take a hands-on approach to every business decision. Benchmark’s current portfolio includes companies such as Cyanogen, Grubhub, Snapchat, Quip, and Zuora; exits such as Gaikai, Instagram, OpenTable, Wix, Zendesk and Zillow; and market leaders including eBay, Uber, Twitter, and Yelp. Benchmark has offices in Woodside and San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.benchmark.com.