A new security vendor is officially starting up today, with the launch of OPAQ Networks (pronounced opaque). As part of the official launch, OPAQ Networks also announced that it has raised $21 million in a Series A round of funding. While OPAQ is a new company, it’s largely based on the technology assets and customers from Bat Blue Networks, which OPAQ has acquired.
The Series A funding was led by Columbia Capital, with the participation of Harmony Partners and Zero-G Inc. OPAQ Networks is being led by CEO Glenn Hazard, who had been the CEO of privileged identity provider Xceedium until August 2015, when the company was acquired by CA.
While in stealth mode, OPAQ Networks acquired Bat Blue Networks for an undisclosed amount. Hazard said that the Bat Blue Networks technologies will be re-branded under the OPAQ Networks name. The overall plan for OPAQ Networks is to add new technologies and capabilities over time.
“From a strategy standpoint, we’ll be looking for both organic and in-organic growth,” Hazard told eWEEK. “As we accelerate this year, we’ll take advantage of opportunities that come our way.”
The core of Bat Blue Network’s platform is a cloud security offering that makes use of a capability called the Global Security Abstraction Layer (Global SeAL). Ken Ammon, Chief Strategy Officer at OPAQ Networks, commented that the Bat Blue technology provides a cloud security network, giving customers a virtual network overlay that is encrypted. In addition to Virtual Private Network (VPN) capabilities, the OPAQ Networks cloud security technology offers customers threat management, compliance and reporting capabilities.
“A lot of work has been done to handle network traffic securely from the edge and how we route that traffic through a security stack that applies the appropriate security features,” Ammon told eWEEK.
The OPAQ Networks platform today provides customers with a management dashboard. Moving forward, Ammon said that the plan is to provide an advanced security advisor capability to help organizations understand security policies and best practice configurations. The advanced security advisor capabilities are set to be added to the OPAQ Networks platform in the first quarter of this year.
Ammon previously worked with Hazard at both Xceedium, where he was also the Chief Security Officer, as well as security services vendor NetSec, which is a company that Ammon founded and was sold to MCI (now Verizon Business) for $105 million in 2005. Both Ammon and Hazard see similarities between their past companies and the new OPAQ Networks effort.
“At NetSec we built out security managed service at scale and with Xceedium we built out cloud functionality,” Ammon said. “I think that we really understand how to build an operational platform and we have a product discipline in how we build organizations.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.