The 20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors Of The 2016 Cloud 100

Coolest Cloud Security Vendors For 2016

As more companies make the move to adopt the cloud, the importance of cloud security vendors and their offerings is at an all-time high. According to research firm Gartner's predictions for 2016, security needs to be top of mind for companies as they extend their business processes to the cloud. That includes securing workloads, data and accessing the security of cloud providers, the research firm said. Big-name vendors and startups alike are looking to capitalize on the continued shift to the cloud, jumping into the market with security solutions for data, containers, applications and more. Take a look at 20 of the coolest security-focused companies that are shaking up the market this year.

If you missed it, check out the vendors in the other categories of The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2016.

Avanan

Gil Friedrich, CEO

Headquarters: New York

Launching from stealth last year, Avanan aims to provide what it calls "complete cloud security," bringing together the big-name vendors that partners know and love into a single cloud-based platform. For solution providers, that means access to quickly deployable and easy-to-manage platforms for anti-virus, advanced persistent threat protection, data sanitization, file encryption, shadow IT and data leakage prevention.

AVG

Gary Kovacs, CEO

Headquarters: San Francisco

In 2015, AVG extended its Business Managed Workplace solution to include single sign-on and backup and disaster recovery solutions, as well as integration with Office 365 and VMware. Widely known for its consumer anti-virus brands, AVG has been putting increased emphasis on the small-business space, particularly around mobile and cloud applications and services.

Blue Coat Systems

Greg Clark, CEO

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Blue Coat Systems says it wants to redefine what the next generation of cloud security looks like, making big moves over the past year to align its portfolio to offer a full stack of enterprise-grade cloud security solutions. That push included two acquisitions in cloud access security broker space in 2015: Elastica in November and Perspecsys in July.

Centrify

Tom Kemp, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

As more companies move to the cloud and embrace cloud-based applications, Centrify offers a portfolio of solutions to help secure and manage access to that technology. The company's solutions include identity and access management, single sign-on, privilege management, enterprise mobility management and more. Centrify also has partnered with vendors in the cloud access security broker space to enhance application security.

CipherCloud

Pravin Kothari, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

With significant investments from big-name venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, CipherCloud extends visibility, protection and monitoring to the cloud. The CipherCloud Open Platform, which is available as a service or as a virtual appliance, includes encryption, tokenization, activity monitoring, data loss prevention, malware detection, and more to protect clients looking to make the jump to the cloud.

HyTrust

John De Santis, CEO

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

As more companies move to virtualize their environments, HyTrust is there to help them do it securely. The company's HyTrust CloudControl offering brings authentication, authorization and auditing to virtual environments, and its DataControl offering brings strong encryption for virtual machines.

LightCyber

Gonen Fink, CEO

Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.

Another year of mega data breaches has shown that, despite the best protections, attackers are still getting into company environments. LightCyber aims to help with that problem with its Active Breach Detection solution to root out attackers using behavior analytics. The company landed big recognition for its technology in 2015, adding renowned security investor Shlomo Kramer to its board of directors.

Netskope

Sanjay Beri, CEO

Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.

Looking to grab a piece of the blossoming market for cloud access security brokers is Netskope, which offers an agentless way to implement data loss prevention, visibility and policy enforcement in the cloud. In September 2015, the company closed $75 million in Series D funding, which it said would go to growing sales, marketing and R&D.

Okta

Todd McKinnon, CEO

Headquarters: San Francisco

Okta had an incredible run in 2015, landing $75 million in Series E funding in June (which valued the company around $1.2 billion) and marching toward an imminent IPO. Driving that growth is an identity management solution that allows users to securely connect to company applications through a single, secure login.

Palerra

Rohit Gupta, CEO

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Palerra's LORIC platform works to automate security as companies move to the cloud, providing threat detection, predictive analytics, security configuration management and automated incident response. The company, which landed $17 million in funding this year, works with popular cloud and application providers, including Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com, Box and Microsoft.

Proofpoint

Gary Steele, CEO

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

One of the larger vendors focused on the cloud security market, Proofpoint has a wide portfolio of solutions for the enterprise cloud, including threat protection, compliance, and data discovery and management. This year, the security vendor also dove further into the social media space, looking to secure and ensure compliance around social media.

Skyhigh Networks

Rajiv Gupta, CEO

Headquarters: Campbell, Calif.

As one of the larger cloud access security brokers, Skyhigh Networks works to protect the usage of both sanctioned and unsanctioned IT, securing more than 16,000 cloud services. The company's platform gives visibility into cloud usage, helps companies set and enforce security polices, detect threats and meet compliance.

Sophos

Kris Hagerman, CEO

Headquarters: Oxford, U.K.

The Sophos Cloud is a unifying piece of the Sophos portfolio, allowing for managed security of endpoints, mobile, Web gateways and servers from a single cloud console. The solution got more powerful in 2015, with the launch of Security Heartbeat, which links together threat intelligence from the endpoint and the network for better detection and response capabilities.

Sumo Logic

Ramin Sayar, CEO

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

Sumo Logic uses the power of the cloud to drive intelligence and better decision-making around massive pools of data. For security, that means a predictive Software-as-a-Service analytics solution that can automate and demonstrate compliance, provide visibility, and use machine-learning algorithms for threat detection with better outlier prediction, pattern recognition and data visualization.

Twistlock

Ben Bernstein, CEO

Headquarters: San Francisco

As more enterprises look to embrace container technology, startup Twistlock is looking to help them do so securely. The company offers a solution for enterprises to monitor both static and runtime container application activity, establish security baselines prior to production, and protect cloud and on-premise containers. Twistlock landed $2.5 million in seed funding in May 2015.

vArmour

Timothy Eades, CEO

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

By placing distributed sensors and enforcement points deep within the cloud and data center, vArmour is looking to help companies better protect their data in virtualized and cloud environments. Launched in 2015, its new Multicloud Security Architecture extends those capabilities with a vendor-agnostic framework for deploying security solutions across highly distributed computing environments.

Vera

Ajay Arora, CEO

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Vera looks to secure data wherever it sits, including the cloud. As perimeter defenses have been proven flawed again and again, Vera works to secure files with AES 256 encryption as they move between environments and provide visibility, policy enforcement and centralized control over access and usage.

Waratek

Brian Maccaba, CEO

Headquarters: Dublin, Ireland

Winner of the prestigious RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox competition in 2015, Waratek offers a runtime application protection solution, dubbed AppSecurity for Java, that uses on-premise or cloud-based containers to provide a "bulletproof vest" against both known and unknown software vulnerabilities in new or legacy applications.

Webroot

Dick Williams, CEO

Headquarters: Broomfield, Colo.

Webroot uses the cloud to provide enhanced threat detection and protection for both consumers and the enterprise through its BrightCloud security intelligence platform and SecureAnywhere solutions line. Known mostly for its Internet security solutions, the company also protects endpoints, mobile devices and the network.

Zscaler

Jay Chaudhry, CEO

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Zscaler looks to bring the best of cloud computing to the Internet security market. With a per-user subscription model based fully in the cloud, Zscaler acts as a "check post" between an enterprise and the Internet, scanning traffic using its solutions for Internet security, advanced persistent threat protection, data loss prevention, SSL decryption, traffic shaping, policy management and threat intelligence.