The 20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors Of The 2015 Cloud 100

Coolest Cloud Security Vendors For 2015

Cloud security platforms are helping organizations mitigate risks associated with using cloud-based applications and services. They can provide strong data protection capabilities, incorporating data loss prevention and data encryption and tokenization. A group of vendors provide identity and access management capabilities. Others monitor cloud-based systems for suspicious activity and provide a mechanism for policy enforcement, reporting and alerting. Some vendors are also pushing the envelope, providing SaaS-based tools for managing incident response activities, a cloud-based sandbox to analyze and identify advanced threats or track and control employee laptops, smartphones and tablets regardless of their location.

Absolute Software

Geoff Haydon

CEO

Absolute Software uses persistence technology, a module embedded in the firmware of laptops, tablets and smartphones mobile devices always connected to the IT organization. It uses agents that can be controlled through a cloud-based console to manage and secure the devices. It also can forensically mine stolen devices regardless of their location.

Alert Logic

Gray Hall

Chairman, CEO

Alert Logic is gaining attention for its SaaS-based platform, which provides log management, intrusion detection and vulnerability scanning and is monitored via the vendor’s security operation center or a managed services provider partner.

AVG

Gary Kovacs

CEO

AVG is transitioning from a standard antivirus suite for businesses to a cloud-enabled platform friendly with businesses and one that is increasingly cloud-enabled and tied to remote management solutions for MSPs with SMB clients. AVG CloudCare uses a pay-as-you-go consumption model.

CA Technologies

Michael Gregoire

CEO

CA acquired Arcott Systems in 2010, adding its market-leading SaaS-based identity and access management platform into its portfolio. Now called CA Secure Cloud, the service manages identities for cloud-based services and on-premise applications. CA Identity Manager SaaS addresses user provisioning, workflow and reporting capabilities.

Centrify

Tom Kemp

Co-founder, CEO

Centrify sells a SaaS-based platform to provide end users with single sign-on to cloud-based applications. The company got its start in 2004 unifying privileged accounts across Windows, Unix and Linux servers. Today, it takes a two-pronged approach, providing the SaaS edition for SSO with an identity and access management suite designed for data center environments.

CipherCloud

Pravin Kothari

Founder, CEO

CipherCloud is one of a growing number of cloud security vendors that can identify Shadow IT, the unauthorized use of cloud applications across an organization’s network. The company provides encryption, tokenization, data loss prevention, malware detection and activity monitoring over popular SaaS-based services.

Co3 Systems

John Bruce

CEO

Co3 Systems sells a SaaS-based security incident response management platform that aids in the investigation, collaboration and reporting of incidents. It can aid the response workflow associated with malware infections, phishing campaigns, denial of service attacks, intellectual property theft and system intrusions.

Confer

Mark Quinlivan

Founder, CEO

Security startup Confer says its threat-sharing service is built on a SaaS-managed, host-based platform that tracks the behavior of threat actors and enables organizations to collect and share threat intelligence. The service collects tactics, techniques and procedures of advanced attacks.

Elastica

Rehan Jalil

President, CEO

Elastica sells a SaaS-based security operations center platform. It is designed to probe an organization’s network to identify unauthorized use of cloud applications and uses an analytics engine to detect threats to data within cloud-based applications. The company supports global policies across popular cloud-based applications.

HyTrust

John De Santis

Chairman, CEO

HyTrust secures virtualized environments and can identify misconfiguration issues. HighTrust CloudControl sits between administrators and VMware vSphere to provide access controls and visibility into the virtualized environment. HyTrust DataControl uses a software agent to encrypt data from within the Windows or Linux operating system of a virtual machine.

Netskope

Sanjay Beri

Founder, CEO

Netskope provides a platform that can identify Shadow IT, the use of unauthorized cloud services in the organization. Netskope Active Platform details how all cloud apps are being used, providing IT teams with details on users, apps, app categories, devices, activities and content being used or modified. It can also detect behavior that may signal an attacker using stolen passwords.

OpenDNS

David Ulevitch

CEO

OpenDNS developed an enterprise-grade cloud network security platform designed to provide phishing protection, Web filtering and botnet protection. The company claims to use big data analytics to protect against emerging threats by monitoring DNS infrastructure and malicious IP addresses. It is a favorite of MSPs, who can use the OpenDNS Umbrella service as a security service for their client base.

Ping Identity

Andre Durand

CEO

Ping Identity sells a SaaS-based identity management suite for single sign-on, federated identity and multifactor authentication. PingOne extends SSO to popular cloud-based services and provides automated user provisioning, reporting and user metrics. PingID extends strong authentication to legacy and cloud applications through employee mobile devices.

Proofpoint

Gary Steele

CEO

Proofpoint is known for its email security and archiving and offers SaaS-based or on-demand versions of its email security and data loss prevention offerings. It acquired NetCitadel for automated security incident response, Amorize Technologies for SaaS-based antimalware capabilities, and Nexgate to detect fraudulent social media accounts and online brand protection.

Seculert

Dudi Matot

Co-founder, CEO

Seculert’s SaaS-based breach detection platform monitors corporate networks for advanced threats and returns a report of verified infections. The technology analyzes traffic logs to identify malware communicating with a criminal’s remote command and control server. The company also detonates and monitors suspicious files in a cloud-based sandbox environment.

Sumo Logic

Ramin Sayar

President, CEO

Sumo Logic sells a SaaS-based Log Management and Analytics Service that collects log data from any source. The service pulls in data and tracks the performance of production applications or infrastructure. It can monitor and alert when it identifies slow or interrupted application response times, a new pattern in the log data or other deviations from system baselines.

ThreatMetrix

Reed Taussig

President, CEO

ThreatMetrix is an antifraud service that can detect account takeover, card-not-present, and fictitious account registration frauds for online retailers, banks and other financial services organizations. It takes a device fingerprint and online persona of users attempting to make a website transaction. In addition to monitoring user behavior, it can identify malicious code and spot Web browser spoofing.

Vaultive

Jonas Hellgren

CEO

Vaultive provides cloud data encryption including encryption of data at rest, in transit and in use. The SaaS-based platform encrypts data before it is moved to a cloud environment. The company uses a stateless network-layer software encryption proxy to get the job done.

Webroot

Dick Williams

President, CEO

Webroot’s SecureAnywhere Business is a completely cloud-enabled suite that includes antimalware, mobile protection and cloud security gateway capabilities. It claims its software can be installed in seconds and doesn’t require signature updates. An endpoint agent can enforce custom policies and identifies malware through the company’s cloud predictive antimalware engine.

Zscaler

Jay Chaudhry

CEO

Zscaler is an IPO candidate for 2015. The Security-as-a-Service provides secure Web gateway capabilities, Web filtering, intrusion prevention and deep packet inspection capabilities. Its data loss prevention can decrypt and inspect content encrypted with SSL. A cloud-based sandbox inspects suspicious files to detect advanced threats.