NYC-based startup Venn Software announced Wednesday that it has been awarded a patent for its technology that helps secure the devices of remote workers. The company also revealed a $29 million Series A funding round, led by NewSpring Capital, which will be used to support product development and meet customer demand.
Venn’s technology is specifically designed to protect sensitive company information on any remote device, whether it is a company-owned computer or an employee’s personal smartphone, without having to control the entire device. Instead, work activity lives in a company-controlled “secure enclave” that’s been installed on the device, where all data is encrypted and access is managed. Work applications run locally within the enclave, where business activity is isolated and protected from any personal use on the same device.
While the idea for Venn dates back to 2019, this technology has become much more prevalent post-pandemic, with remote and hybrid work creating new kinds of cybersecurity challenges. As such, mobile-device management (MDM) has become a popular way to protect sensitive company data on employees’ personal devices. Usually this is done with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which essentially allows companies to run apps on a host server and stream them to remote devices. But Venn CEO and co-founder David Matalon said this comes with too many challenges.
“Companies had to ship laptops or rely on complex and costly VDI technology to support remote workers and stay compliant with regulatory requirements,” Matalon said in a statement. So, he and the team at Venn worked for more than two years to come up with a simpler and cheaper alternative. “Instead of having to buy, manage and lock down every PC, remote work can now easily be secured on any [personal device] or unmanaged computer. Venn gives organizations more control, without any backend infrastructure.”
NewSpring first invested in Venn back in 2019, which fueled the development of its technology. Over the years, the startup has filed for multiple patents, and was recently granted its first from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a “secure visual and computational boundary for a subset or resources on a computing machine.”
Now, with the platform in production and customer demand accelerating, Maton said this latest development will help Venn secure its place at the forefront of the secure remote work space.
