Bricata raises $8M Series A, plans hiring

Columbia-based cybersecurity startup Bricata closed an $8 million Series A round to continue growth.

The round was led by Princeton, N.J.-based Edison Partners, according to a company blog post.

The startup’s product looks for and detects potential threats inside a company’s firewall. It was built in part by commercializing open-source security engines Bro and Suricata.

“What the market should understand is that this is a growth round, which provides the capacity to scale our business even faster…Our product is already serving an established, but underappreciated market, and is deployed and working within about a dozen large and sophisticated enterprises,” the post states.

Bricata relocated to Maryland from Virginia in 2015. The company received funding through the InvestMaryland challenge, as well as a loan from Howard County. A new version of the product was released in May, and the company also integrated machine learning capabilities as part of a partnership with Cylance.

“With the number of cyber breaches growing exponentially, we’re excited to work closely with the Bricata team on their next phase of growth,” Lenard Marcus, a partner at Edison Partners who led the investment, said in a statement.

The company recently brought on cybersecurity executives Druce MacFarlane and Randy Fallis at the vice president level. As a result of the funding, the company will be able to “invest in and cultivate our engineering, sales and marketing talent,” CEO John Trauth said in a statement. The company has 20 employees, and is looking to hire to expand to 48 employees.

Bricata is also forming a board of directors with members that include Trauth, Marcus, former Sourcefire CEO John Becker, investor Ben Levitan and former Booz Allen Hamilton exec George Schu.