Skyhigh Networks Raises $20M For Service That Discovers, Analyzes And Controls Apps Employees Use

Skyhigh Networks discovers,manages and analyzes data from all the apps that people use at work. Today the company raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investor Greylock Partners.

Skyhigh discovers, analyzes and controls the cloud services that a customer’s employee uses. It sees the cloud services customers use and all the associated security issues associated with it. It analyzes the services to find the abnormalities and ways the company can save costs on subscriptions. It also adds an element of control by enforcing IT policies.

The difference for Skyhigh is in the fine grain controls. When it finds abnormalities it can provide encryption, access control and other security features. The discover is based on existing logs and data from proxy and doing analytics. It has a registry of 2,600 services with 500 added every six weeks. For each service they create an independent score across 30 criteria. For the analysis the company has a Hadoop infrastructure. For the control the company has a reverse proxy and associated services it runs through its data centers.

The company is about 18 months old. It raised a Series A round last March from Greylock. Skyhigh will primarily use the funding for sales, marketing, and engineering.

Skyhigh has a platform that provides services with aspects of what you see in something like Splunk. It’s a market that security providers might serve as potential competitors.

Skyhigh is leveraging the bring your own device movement (BYOD), which it addresses at its intersection with the thousands of services employees use but can’t afford to keep exposed to security risks.