Awake Security had an eye-opening launch this summer. The new security analytics vendor introduced itself with an impressive opening round of $30m, sweetened with the addition of board members Asheem Chandra of Greylock Partners and Enrique Salem of Bain Capital.

The Awake announcements continue a summer trend of heavy investments in analytic-oriented security vendors. June saw Sumo Logic close $75m, Sqrrl pocket $12m and Obsidian Security announce a more normal $9.5m. The first two weeks of July featured Darktrace raising $75m, and indications are there will be further machine-learning announcements at next week's Black Hat security conference.

The market opportunity for machine-learning-based vendors like Awake begins with the recognition that log data from prevention products has little value in detecting breaches (prevention products often don't know what they're missing). Thus, security analytics applied to network traffic to study relationships between users, devices, data and domains can help security teams detect breaches, and improve the odds of catching an attack in time to stop the bleeding. User interfaces highlighting directed graph flows complement chasing streams of alerts.

The trend toward analytics driving security operations centers as-a-service is very encouraging because organizations can't pragmatically centralize security processing as the business transforms into the cloud.
Eric Ogren
Senior Analyst, Security

Eric Ogren is a Senior Analyst with the Information Security team. Eric has extensive experience in software development, technology marketing, and as a security industry analyst. Prior to joining 451 Research, Eric held marketing leadership positions with security vendors such as RSA Security and OKENA, and technology vendors such as Digital Equipment, where his experience contributed to pragmatic perspectives for security clients on emerging market trends, company and product strategies, differentiated vendor messaging and positioning, and meeting enterprise solution purchase criteria.

Carl Brooks
Analyst, Service Providers

Carl Brooks is an Analyst for 451 Research's Service Providers Channel, covering cloud computing and the next generation of IT infrastructure. Previously, he spent several years researching and reporting on the emerging cloud market for TechTarget. Carl has also spent more than 10 years supporting small and medium-sized businesses as an IT consultant, network and systems integrator, and IT outsourcer.

Keith Dawson
Principal Analyst

Keith Dawson is a principal analyst in 451 Research's Customer Experience & Commerce practice, primarily covering marketing technology. Keith has been covering the intersection of communications and enterprise software for 25 years, mainly looking at how to influence and optimize the customer experience.

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