Illumio closes $225m funding round, drives zero trust security

Illumio has closed its $225 million Series F funding round to reach a $2.75 billion valuation.

The round was led by Thoma Bravo and is also supported by Franklin Templeton, funds managed by Hamilton Lane, and Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl Capital.

Illumio CEO and co-founder Andrew Rubin says, "Adopting zero trust strategies has never been more important for organisations across all industries.

"This investment signals that now is the time to reimagine the cybersecurity model as we know it, with zero trust segmentation playing a fundamental role in this strategic shift.

"With this funding, we will accelerate our innovation in product and engineering, further invest in customer success, and build upon our global partner strategy.

Illumio is an advocate and specialist in zero trust segmentation. The company's SaaS platform delivers automated enforcement to reduce risk by stopping successful cyber attacks and ransomware from moving to other applications, clouds, containers, data centers, and endpoints.

Illumio Core and Illumio Edge enable businesses to segment hybrid, multi-cloud IT estates and to secure workloads at any scale, from 100 to 100,000+ workloads.

Furthermore, Illumio delivers intelligent visibility, a policy creation engine, and automated segmentation and enforcement.

According to Illumio, a zero trust strategy is the new go-to security model, designed to assume breach at all times. While no single product or platform equals a complete zero trust approach, segmentation is a core pillar of every zero trust strategy.

Thoma Bravo partner Robert (Tre) Sayle says, "As the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks increases, zero trust segmentation is set for a breakthrough moment, and Illumio is the clear market leader.

"Illumio plays a critical role in protecting some of the largest organisations in the world and is well-positioned to build upon its record-breaking growth with continued sales momentum and product innovation.

"We look forward to partnering with the talented Illumio team and leveraging Thoma Bravo's significant security and operational expertise as we embark on an initiative to invest in hyper growth software and technology companies.

Recently Illumio has experienced the fastest period of growth in company history with highlights including:

• Being named as a Leader in Zero Trust platforms by Forrester Research in The Forrester Wave: Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q3 2020 report
• Closing the strongest quarter (Q4 for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2021) in company history and highest number of new customers in a fiscal year
• Achieving international annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth of more than 100%
• Gaining significant traction in the Illumio federal business