Dell Invests in ‘Zero-day’ Security Startup Invincea

• By Clint Boulton

Reporter

AUSTIN — Dell Inc. is co-leading a $16 million investment in security startup Invincea Inc. It already bundles the company’s software on computers and tablets sold to businesses. Invincea makes software that contains “zero-day attacks” — threats that exploit a previously unknown vulnerability in applications — to prevent them from spreading to other computer software, said Jim Lussier, managing director of Dell Ventures.

“You just can’t keep up,” with the security threats, Mr. Lussier said in an interview at Dell’s customer conference here Friday. “It’s a really big problem.”

Co-led by Aeris Capital, the series C funding round is the latest investment made by Dell Ventures’ $300 million Strategic Innovation Venture Fund, which the company announced here Thursday. Dell sees the fund as a strategic pillar of its reinvention as a private company. The fund will back startups developing new technologies in storage, cloud, analytics, mobility and security, and hopes to generate significant returns.

Invincea is Dell’s latest bet. “If by working with us the company were to double… we get to participate in the upside that we helped to create,” Mr. Lussier said.

Traditional antivirus approaches involve detecting a virus and developing a patch to prevent it from spreading, said Mr. Lussier. But security threats are becoming more sophisticated and the very nature of zero-day attacks means no patches are available. When installed on computers, Invincea’s FreeSpace software detects zero-day viruses in applications such as Microsoft Corp.'s Office, Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF Reader, and Web browsers, isolates the malware, and moves it to a virtual container to prevent it from spreading, Mr. Lussier said. Invincea targets spear-phishing, an email scam in which a sender pretends to be someone else to access sensitive data; drive-by download exploits, in which users unwittingly infect their computers by clicking on Web links or downloading apps infected with the virus; and watering hole attacks, in which perpetrators hack legitimate websites to spread malware to users.

Invincea, which said in a statement it will use the funding to expand in Europe, has roughly 10,000 customers across energy, high-tech, financial services, healthcare, retail and other sectors. Fairfax, Va.-based Invincea’s roots lie in the federal government. While working as a program manager for cybersecurity systems for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, founder and CEO Anup Ghosh developed Invincea’s core technology as a virtual Web browsing solution. He commercialized the software as FreeSpace in 2009, according to the company’s website.

Dell in June 2013 began bundling Invincea’s software on its Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision tablets and PCs. Mr. Lussier said the bundle, good for one year from the time of purchase, will make its way onto 20 million computers over the next year.

Dell’s innovation fund is ramping up. The company funded flash storage provider Skyera Inc. and cloud services specialist Mirantis Inc., earlier this year. Mr. Lussier said Dell has funded other startups, though he declined to name them to preserve “strategic” advantages in the market.