Expel Raises $20M Series B For Customer Cybersecurity

B2B cybersecurity platform Expel announced today that it raised a $20 million Series B led by Silicon Valley-based Scale Venture Partners. New Enterprise Associates, Battery Ventures, Greycroft, and other venture capital firms also participated in the round.

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Prior to this capital event, the company raised a $7.5 million Series A led by Washington D.C.-based Paladin Capital Group in September 2016. Its latest round brings the company’s aggregate funds raised to $27.5 million.

Expel was founded in Mclean, Virginia by Dave Merkel, Yanek Korff, and Justin Bajko in 2016. The startup aims to demystify the cybersecurity space with its security threat monitoring and detecting products. The startup boasts itself as the transparent, cooperative alternative to other managed security service providers (MSSPs).

“Most MSSPs and MDRs operate as a ‘black box’ and the customer has no idea what they’re doing,” CEO Dave Merkel told Crunchbase News in an email.

Expel’s user interface is meant to give customers an interactive look at the threats found by analysts, the processes taken to stall those threats, as well as action items for customers to fix current and future threats to security. Its products integrate with pre-purchased security platforms, and the startup also offers a “hunting” option which finds other existing security threats.

“Since the initial raise in 2016, we built and launched the offering, built our security operations center (SOC), signed our initial group of customers and grew the company to 55 employees,” Merkel told Crunchbase News.

According to its press release, Expel will use its newly raised capital for product development and go-to-market activities. Merkel mentioned to Crunchbase News that Expel will also add new offerings to manage customer cloud environments.

Increased focus on cloud computing has brought along further interest in cybersecurity both regarding data use and security threats. As everyone is aware, Facebook and other social media outlets have been under fire for lax security and data management. Meanwhile, Carbon Black, a security-focused SaaS firm, recently filed to go public. In light of the current political climate and discussions surrounding the issue, this is quite the time to be a security monitoring business focused on transparency and user involvement.

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