Some say, “the South will rise again,” well, could this be part of that trend? Although Silicon Valley is still where it’s at for all things tech, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has recently taken part in a $10 million investment round for Atlanta-based start-up, Ionic Security. Google Ventures led this move, and it is Google’s first foray into a southeastern company investment.
Ionic Security was created to help businesses protect intellectual property, customer data and oversee data security held on mobile devices and in the cloud. Ionic’s CEO Steve Abbott asserted, “We are trying to provide a safer way to share information from mobile devices and laptops to data centers and back.”
Other Ionic investors, from the Silicon Valley, include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In fact, Google Ventures is so impressed with Ionic Security that they plan to invest over $1 billion within the next five years. That would certainly help with Ionic’s valuation as well as their ability to significantly increase their R&D, and their marketing.
In today’s world, a rising amount of sensitive information is being transferred over mobile devices. Many of those devices have loopholes in security, leaving data open to cyber-attacks. This is especially true as companies struggle to implement safe and effective BYOD or CYOD policies that don’t hurt employee morale.
Blake Byers, partner at Google Ventures, believes the current system of security mobile information to be lacking. Ionic’s software encrypts data as soon as it is generated and before its transfer. Not to mention, the software also monitors the data, where it travels and who views it. Google Inc. believes this is how data security should be done, hence the investment.
It is good to know that Google is making strides with their investments in security, most notably because trillions of dollars worth of data is lost every year as a result of cyber-attacks. Additionally, it will be interesting to watch how far their partnership takes Ionic Security.
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