Bluebox, a stealthy security technology startup, has closed a $9.5 million Series A financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
The company’s focus reportedly is on meeting corporate security needs while enabling the use of tablets, smartphones and other devices that in many cases are owned by employees.
Additional investors include: Andreas Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early Google investor; SV Angel, Ram Shriram, Google board member and one of its first investors; and Brian Cohen, former CEO of SPI Dynamics. Along with the initial round of funding, Bechtolsheim and Scott Weiss, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, have been named to the company’s board of directors.
The name Bluebox is redolent of pre-digital telephone hacking, since it was the generic term for homemade electronic devices that tricked carriers into not charging for long-distance calls. (Ask any older geek what 2600 Hz means to them.)
Bluebox is founded by a team undoubtedly familiar with that earlier usage. Bluebox CEO and co-founder is Caleb Sima, who joined HP as chief technology officer for HP’s Application Security Center following HP’s acquisition of SPI Dynamics, the Web application security company he co-founded and led as chief technology officer.
Co-founder Adam Ely was formerly a chief information security officer at salesforce.com, having previously held security leadership roles at TiVo and the Walt Disney Company.
“This is the most amazing security team that I’ve seen in a long time,” said Scott Weiss, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco. “They are going after one of the hardest problems that companies face and where incumbents have floundered.”
Related links:
Bluebox – press release
Bluebox – official site
Kaspersky’s Tech Threat – Security Veterans Score Funding for New Startup Bluebox
VentureBeat – Mystery enterprise security startup Bluebox gets $9.5M from Andreessen Horowitz
TechCrunch – Bluebox Raises $9.5M From Andreessen Horowitz & Others For A Stealthy, Disruptive Mobile Security Solution
GigaOm – Stealthy startup Bluebox gets $9.5M to secure a BYOD world
Image of the Tardis from “Dr. Who” courtesy of the BBC
