You just got hacked. What happened? How could you have prevented this? The obvious questions only come after the deed has been done. Security firm Cylance wants to put an end to reactionary security, and focus on the prevention of attacks. The company got $15 million in its first round of funding today led by storied venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

Cylance was started by former McAfee executive Stuart McClure in 2012. The company has since been in stealth mode, though it has previously talked about some of its products. It officially announced its board members today, including Stewart Baker, formerly of the National Security Administration, and former chief information security officer for the CIA Robert Bigman.

Fairhaven Capital also participated in the round.

The company formally announced its first service called Presponse in December. Presponse, or pre-response, is an auditing service performed by Cylance that looks at a number of your attack vectors, assesses your risk, and gives you a plan of action for protecting yourself.

Presponse first looks at the “critical infrastructure” your company uses, such as connections to the smart grid and connected water systems. It then looks at other smart devices such as Internet-connected thermostats, healthcare devices, and more. It then looks at your business, what kind of information you might store, and how valuable that information is. In the end, it shows you how at-risk you are and exactly where an attack might try to attack.

“If you can secure the very fabric of our society and economy – critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) – you can secure anything,” said Mark Hatfield, Partner at Fairhaven Capital in a statement. “The security industry is ready for an overhaul and Cylance has the vision.”

Cylance image via Cylance

Cyber-Ark protects important and sensitive data including passwords, financial records and top secret files. “Cyber-Ark has always been focused on solving sophisticated threats that enterprises are facing” Cyber-Ark CEO Udi Mokady told VentureBeat. The company helps protect its customers from four main security issues: security threats from malicious insiders, sophisticated outside attacks on sensitive data, compliance with government security regulations and cloud server file protection.

Cyber-Ark offers several product suites, ranging from complete company identity protection to file and server session protection. It offers several layers of protection with its security services including firewalls, secure networks and end-to-end encryption.

“With this latest round of funding we will focus on expanding globally. More than 40 percent of our revenue comes from outside of the US and we believe we can really expand to additional countries” said Mokady “There is going to be a big push on R&D, and we really want to expand the umbrella around our [security] solutions.”

With this new round of funding, Cyber-Ark plans to pursue global expansion for the company and fund research and development of new products. It also plans to build up its sales and marketing departments.

Since its founding in 1999, Cyber-Ark has grown to serve more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including Fortune 100 companies and eight of the top 10 global banks. The company is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts and maintain offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Cyber-Ark has received $65 million in funding so far this year from Goldman Sachs, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Vertex Venture Capital and Cabaret-ArbaOne.

Briefcase photo via Shutterstock