Cato Networks raises $55 million to protect cloud-based computing services

Cybersecurity company Cato Networks has raised $55 million to continue expanding its cloud-based platform that protects networks.

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from all previous investors: Aspect Ventures, Greylock Partners, Singtel Innov8, USVP, and Cato Networks cofounders Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz. The company has now raised a total of $125 million in venture capital.

“Cato closes the huge gap between the needs of the digital business and the rigid, slow, and expensive networks provided by legacy telcos, using a groundbreaking cloud-native carrier architecture,” CEO Kramer said in a statement. “Cato is powered by cloud-scale software, self-service management, and elastic compute and bandwidth to provide the new foundation for the growth of the business.”

Based in Tel Aviv, the company is part of Israel’s red-hot cybersecurity ecosystem. This includes at least 166 cybersecurity startups, of which at least 16 have raised more than $50 million.

The cloud-based platform offers what the company calls “network security as a service” (NSaaS). As companies increasingly move valuable data to the cloud, protecting that information has become both an urgent concern and a potentially lucrative opportunity.