NetFoundry, the secure-by-design networking leader, announced an investment of $12 million. While this is the first injection of venture capital into NetFoundry, the company already services eight of the top ten US banks and critical infrastructure on three continents. NetFoundry is the first company to bring military-grade security to networking, while simplifying operations by replacing infrastructure dependencies and day two bolt-ons with a secure-by-design software model.

Galeal Zino, founder and CEO of NetFoundry, said: “This is the iPhone moment for secure networking. NetFoundry’s approach is revolutionary in that it enables military-grade security, but with the speed and extensibility of software. Organizations can no longer tolerate the trade-offs of WAN/SASE/firewall architecture – that old model is shredded by an AI-accelerated world.”

In addition to NetFoundry serving two of the top five companies on the Fortune 500 list, solutions publicly leveraging NetFoundry include IT, IoT and OT solutions from Arrow, Cap Gemini, CERM, Digibee, EdgeX Foundry, FreeWave, IBM, Intrusion, LVT, Marposs, Microsoft, Oracle, Ozone, Redfaire, TZ and the USA military.  

NetFoundry’s secure networking as software is aimed both at enterprise IT and product providers. Some of the world’s largest industrial and cloud service providers now sell secure-by-design products by embedding NetFoundry’s zero trust networking in their products in an ‘Intel Inside’ type OEM model.

Businesses that require both strong security and rapid deployment, such as financial services, have led the charge towards this new secure-by-design, network-as-code model, but the emerging AI era is making it important for all businesses. 

Josh Schertzer, most recently CTO of enterprise technology at Blackstone, said: “Finance firms benefited from being the infrastructure-as-code leaders, and are now taking the final step by completing the platform with network-as-code deployments. NetFoundry’s reinvention of secure networking was the missing link – the way to complete the journey to an infrastructure independent, secure-by-design enterprise platform.” 

NetFoundry enables the “develop once, deploy anywhere, deliver everywhere” model in which teams leverage distributed compute without needing to glue it all together at the network layer.

Dan Burns, partner at SYN Ventures and former CEO of cybersecurity leader Optiv said: “Only software can keep up with software. Dependencies on infrastructure, IP addresses, underlay networks, specific clouds and firewall ACLs are barriers to business velocity, security and agility. By eliminating these barriers, NetFoundry enables enterprises to simplify, secure and accelerate digital transformation.”

Public NetFoundry case studies include examples of just-in-time zero trust networking for use cases from financial services to military drones to industrial automation. While SASE clouds divert and decrypt the sensitive data, NetFoundry provides end-to-end encryption with the keys sovereign to the endpoints, for both on-premises and cloud native deployments.

About NetFoundry

Businesses use NetFoundry to simply and securely connect any workflow, across any set of networks, using cloud-native, turnkey NaaS and on-premises licensed software models. Providers use NetFoundry to embed zero trust in their products as software, leveraging an ‘Intel Inside’ type OEM model. NetFoundry is the inventor and maintainer of the world’s most used open source zero trust software, OpenZiti.

About SYN Ventures

SYN Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive and innovative security companies in the cybersecurity, industrial security, national defense, privacy, regulatory compliance, and data governance industries. The firm’s dedicated security team of former CISOs, CEOs, CTOs and founders has a proven track record with over 400 years of combined security investing and operational experience. SYN also has a highly distinguished network of seasoned security advisors and CISOs.