TriCipher, Inc. Raises $10.1 Million in Series B Round
SAN FRANCISCO, CA., RSA Conference 2005 (Booth #1504)- February 15, 2005 – TriCipher, Inc., the innovator of strong authentication for the real world, today announced it has secured $10.1 million in second round equity financing from ArrowPath Venture Capital, Trident Capital, Wasatch Venture Capital and other strategic investors. In addition, Rick Friedman, partner, ArrowPath Venture Capital, Peter Meekin, managing director, Trident Capital and Nick Efstratis, partner, Wasatch Venture Capital will join TriCipher’s board of directors.
“As someone who spent a large part of my career being responsible for enterprise security, I can attest to the difficulty of deploying aging legacy strong authentication solutions,” said TriCipher founder and CEO Ravi Ganesan. “Phishing, insider crime and regulations have raised the heat on enterprises to act, and now we’ve helped remove the obstacles preventing enterprises from the wide scale deployment of strong authentication.”
TriCipher, which until recently operated as part of a leading Japanese technology company, Nippon Systems Development (NSD), raised the capital primarily to finance establishing the company’s product and sales operations in the US and European markets; NSD will continue to service the Japanese market. The Company’s TriCipher Armored Credential Systemâ„? (TACS) has been selected and deployed by leading financial services, healthcare companies and governments in the US and Europe to combat the problems of phishing and theft of password files. TriCipher technology is based on ten patents under exclusive license from Verizon® Communications, and its TACS system is the world’s first authentication system that maintains very high levels of assurance while directly addressing the ease of use and deployability concerns which have held back strong authentication products in the past.
“We see a big gap in the market between password systems that are too weak and 2-Factor systems that are too expensive and too hard to use. The TriCipher approach fills that gap, making strong security work in real-world settings,” added Peter Meekin, managing director, Trident Capital. “We believe this technology will become the new baseline for authentication security.”
About TriCipher, Inc.
TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication for the real world. The first authentication system that issues multiple types of credentials from a single infrastructure, the TriCipher Armored Credential Systemâ„? (TACS) allows for authentication strength to change in response to new threats without any infrastructure changes. Our patented technology fills the gap between authentication systems that are either not secure enough or too hard to use and deploy. TriCipher’s innovative approach to strong multi-factor authentication protects against phishing and eliminates dictionary attacks. Founded in 2000, TriCipher is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The Company was incubated as NSD Security before launching as a separate entity in 2005. Investors in TriCipher are ArrowPath Venture Capital, Intel® Capital, Trident Ventures and Wasatch Venture Partners. For more information, please visit www.tricipher.com or email info@tricipher.com.
About ArrowPath Venture Captial
ArrowPath is a unique, $400 million early stage venture capital firm located in Menlo Park, California. ArrowPath selectively invests in information technology companies that have differentiated product offerings and prospects for market leadership over time. Areas of investment include enterprise software, network security, data and storage networking, vertical applications, web services and other data-center and application software technologies. For additional information, visit www.arrowpathvc.com
About Trident Capital
Trident Capital is a leading venture firm with over $1.2 billion of capital under management. Since its founding in 1993, Trident has invested in more than 100 companies in the information services and enterprise software sectors. Mobile applications and infrastructure software have long been a core investment focus of Trident with past investments in American Cellular, ByteMobile, CSG Systems, Evolving Systems, Mapquest and Questra. Trident is an active investor across multiple stages, with experience in both traditional venture capital growth financing as well as in management buyouts and corporate spin-outs. The firm has offices in Palo Alto, CA; Lake Forest, IL; Los Angeles, CA; and Westport, CT. For more information, go to www.tridentcapital.com.
About Wasatch Venture Capital
Wasatch Venture Capital, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson affiliate, is a Salt Lake City based venture capital firm, specializing in early-stage, information technology investments. In addition to Utah, Wasatch maintains offices in Tempe, Arizona and San Mateo, California. Since the Fund’s inception in 1994 by Zions Bank, Wasatch has focused exclusively on working with driven entrepreneurs to build successful technology companies.