By Ethan Forman, Mass High Tech
Boston-based Core Securities Inc., a maker of network penetration testing software for the military, government and large businesses, said today it has closed on a $4.5 million second round of funding with Morgan Stanley Venture Partners.
“What this funding is about is to tell our story,” said chief executive officer Paul Paget. “To let those organizations … know there is a vehicle for them to proactively deal with this issue.”
Paget said Core Securities would use the money to expand its sales, marketing, support and product development staff.
The money will be used to recruit more than 10 sales, support and marketing people here in Boston, Paget said. The company relocated its headquarters from New York in 2003 to the seaport district of South Boston.
It will also hire software engineers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the company was founded in 1996 and where the product is developed today. Fifty of the company’s 60 employees work in Argentina.
The software product called Core Impact can automatically probe whether a worm, virus or hacker can break through a company’s firewall and gain access or control of servers, the company said.
As part of the funding round, Morgan Stanley Venture Partners’ Ghassan Bejjani and Patrick Gallagher will join Core Securities’ board.
Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, the $1 billion venture capital arm of financial services giant Morgan Stanley, was the sole participant in the round.
“The whole mission this year and next is to really build this out in the U.S.,” said Paget, a Massachusetts software veteran who worked for Lotus Development Corp. and the spinout of GTE’s CyberTrust to Baltimore Technologies Americas.
Paget said the company has 160 customers, up from 40 two years ago. Military customers include the Army, Air Force, Marines, NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory and West Point.
Core Security also counts Microsoft Corp., Symantec, and McAfee among its software customers. Commercial customers include CNN, Fox and Continental Airlines.
Source: Mass High Tech
http://www.masshightech.com/displayarticledetail.a
