Axis Security announced a $50 million Series C round, bringing its total raised to date to $100 million. The funding round, led by new investor Spark Capital with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, Ten Eleven Ventures, and Cyberstarts.

"When the pandemic hit, the impact of work-from-anywhere was immediate and profound, and organizations trying to scale legacy access technologies really struggled," said Dor Knafo, Axis Security, co-founder and CEO. "Axis was well positioned and within months we were enabling secure remote access for hundreds of thousands of users and millions of connections.  The Application Access Cloud functions as a logical overlay, greatly reducing risk and significantly strengthening security. This technology has the capability to significantly reduce growing cyber threats such as those enabled by the recent SolarWinds and Microsoft email server breaches." 

The Axis Security Application Access Cloud brokers enterprise access to replace multiple complicated remote access technologies such as VPNs, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and inline cloud access security broker (CASB) services with a simple zero trust platform. 

The App Access Cloud has a unique architecture that makes it amazingly simple to deploy, use, and manage while delivering more secure access -- keeping users off the corporate network, and reducing risk by isolating applications. It enables more use cases than any other ZTNA solution accommodating any application or user as well as latency-sensitive and multi-directional access scenarios. The App Access Cloud changes the game with a ZTNA solution that is finally able to fully replace and go beyond legacy VPNs, without replicating or changing the existing network.

"Enterprises are reevaluating their access strategies and the market is experiencing a crucial shift in how business is conducted," said Will Reed, General Partner at Spark Capital. "The challenges with legacy solutions like VPNs were well-known before COVID-19 and became intolerable afterwards. In the past year, Axis has not only proven that they have a vision for the future of enterprise access, but also that they can also deliver on it. We are excited to be on board for the next stage of their growth."

"Secure remote access for employees and third parties is a major challenge and top priority," said Diego Souza, Global Chief Information Security Officer. "Cloud-based, zero trust network access solutions offer a better path forward in the work-from-anywhere world we now operate in. ZTNA solutions can reduce risk by keeping users off the network and away from the applications themselves. They also continuously enforce granular access policies to ensure a true zero trust approach."

"Axis Application Access Cloud provides a flexible platform for zero trust network access.  Application isolation technology keeps users separate from the network, and the application, greatly reducing the threat surface and continuous monitoring and enforcement are well aligned with our zero trust strategy," said Brandon Kessler, CEO, SkySail RX. "Beyond the zero trust capabilities, Axis also delivered a simple integration with Azure Active Directory and a cost-effective deployment that helped us reduce our development costs."

The new funding will accelerate Axis' product development and feature velocity, and expand go-to-market initiatives, including expanding its direct sales team, support for channel partners, integrations, and partnerships with leading security information and event management (SIEM), security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), identity management, and endpoint security vendors among others.