Press Release
February 28th, 2012Duo Security Raises New Round of Funding Led by Google Ventures
Company to dramatically enhance its mobile security and authentication offering
RSA Conference 2012 — San Francisco — February 28, 2012 — Duo Security LLC, an emerging authentication-as-a-service provider, has received a $5 million investment from Google Ventures, True Ventures, and Resonant Venture Partners. This investment, which follows an earlier round from True Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners, allows the company to expand their team, mobile security research, and strong authentication platform development.
As passwords are vulnerable to being stolen by malware or guessed by an attacker, Duo Security leverages users' mobile phones as a second factor of authentication, which significantly reduces the chance of account compromise. In two years, Duo Security has added over 500 customers with users across 80 countries for their two-factor authentication service, which enables organizations to protect their critical user accounts from being compromised. Current customers include online businesses, education institutions, healthcare providers, and enterprises — such as Tumblr, University of Michigan, Central Ohio Primary Care, and Toyota.
Duo Security's founders — Dug Song, CEO and Jon Oberheide, CTO — are accomplished security veterans with a history of identifying and addressing weaknesses in software and networking technology. Dug was previously Chief Security Architect at Arbor Networks, which protects the vast majority of Internet service providers around the world. Jon holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of Michigan and is known throughout the security community for his research and exploits — most specifically in mobile security, cloud security, and malware analysis.
“We are developing solutions to address some of the most daunting challenges in computer security — account takeover and online fraud,” said Dug Song, CEO of Duo Security. “We have already seen traction with our service as companies across a range of industries adopt it to address security threats and maintain a great experience for their users.”
“Proper identity assurance and mobile security are critical for the growth of meaningful online services,” said Karim Faris, Partner, Google Ventures. “Duo Security is committed to democratizing strong authentication and bringing this previously ‘enterprise-only’ level of security to every Internet user.”
Usability is commonly an afterthought in security software. Duo Security has invested a significant effort in making both the end user and integration experience painless. With Duo Security, most customer deployments are fully functional in a day with IT departments receiving close to zero support calls from their users.
“The authentication market is ripe for disruption catalyzed by escalating threats, new modes of application access and new delivery models and form factors. Duo Security has designed its platform with these broader systemic challenges in scope. By coupling authentication with authorization and anti-fraud at an infrastructure level, Duo Security has the foundation in place to meet evolving market requirements as the disruption unfolds,” added Steve Coplan, senior analyst, 451 Research enterprise security practice.
About Duo Security
Duo Security makes two-factor authentication radically easy to deploy, use, and manage. Duo empowers any web, IT, or network administrator to easily protect accounts by leveraging their users' mobile phones for secondary authentication. Every day, over 500 organizations with users across 80 countries rely on Duo to secure their logins and transactions. Learn more and try it for free at duosecurity.com.
About Google Ventures
Google Ventures is the venture capital arm of Google Inc. We seek to discover and help develop great companies, and believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. Our investments range from seed to late stage, across a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, digital media, software, hardware, and biotechnology. We embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the proverbial garage to global relevance. For more information, visit www.googleventures.com.
About True Ventures
True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm supporting great people in great markets since 2006. Started by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, the team provides funding, resources, and counsel to early stage, high tech startups and their visionary founders. Their portfolio includes investments in WordPress, BrightRoll, Fitbit, Bandcamp, Milo, Puppet Labs, Urban Airship, and StockTwits, to name a few. www.trueventures.com
About Resonant Venture Partners
Resonant Venture Partners is an emerging venture capital firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 2010, Resonant makes seed stage investments in companies developing cloud infrastructure, software and services. The Resonant team is comprised of founders, engineers, operators and investors. Entrepreneurs in their own right, the managing directors partner with portfolio companies through challenging product, market and operational issues at the earliest phases. For more information, visit www.resonantvc.com.