Security software maker Cylance Inc. is entering the consumer market.
The fast-growing Irvine-based company this month will make its flagship offering, Cylance Protect, available to thousands of consumers in its extended network. Its roster of about 6,000 business customers will be able to license the product for their employees, setting a foundation for Cylance’s next level of growth, according to Chief Executive and co-founder Stuart McClure.
“We can now protect customers and prevent breaches at home,” he said last week. “At the end of the day, it secures the company, as well.”
Cylance is fine-tuning a beta version with hundreds of users, according to McClure, before rolling out the product in a few weeks.
The Business Journal reported last year that Cylance was crafting a strategy to grow with a push into the consumer market, competing in a highly competitive, fragmented segment against the likes of Norton Antivirus and McAfee.
Cylance’s automated software fuses machine learning, artificial intelligence algorithms and the cloud to thwart new and evolving threats and cyberattacks before they hit servers, desktops and virtual desktops.
The plug-and-play product can be customized through the employer or end user.
“This story is all about protection through prevention,” said McClure, a recipient of a Business Journal’s Innovator of the Year award last year. “In terms of the value, we’re able to quietly and silently prevent all types of attacks. From a consumer perspective, it’s protecting the home and everything in it.”
That includes multiple smart devices, from thermostats and refrigerators to lighting and sound systems.
Cylance is among the most watched technology companies in Orange County and part of a growing cybersecurity hub here as global attacks and breaches become more prevalent, including the recent Petya ransomware attack in the U.S. and Europe—the second major malicious software attack in as many months.
The ongoing congressional and special counsel investigations into Russia’s tampering in the 2016 U.S. election has also heightened concerns over internet security.
“There’s a lot more awareness today than there ever has been,” McClure said.
Cylance sales topped $81.7 million in the 12 months through June 2016, up a whopping 1,996% from two years earlier.
The leap won it the top spot among midsized companies—those between $10 million and $100 million in annual sales—on the Business Journal’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies list last year.
It has raised $177 million since its 2012 inception.
The funding has helped worldwide employment soar past 800, with about 550 in Irvine.
Cylance recently struck a deal to consolidate its local operation to a new office tower in the Irvine Spectrum, leasing roughly 134,000 square feet at the glass-sheathed building at 400 Spectrum Center.
The lease includes most of the first six floors of the 21-story building.
Its current headquarters at 18201 Von Karman Ave. is a few blocks from John Wayne Airport. The company also leases space at other area buildings.
Cylance will move into its new digs early next year, according to McClure.
Managing growth has presented some challenges for the young company, which has been flirting with profitability for months. The Business Journal reported in April that Cylance initiated a round of job cuts in a restructuring.
The cuts were less than 50, so the company was not required to file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the state Employment Development Department.
“These changes are a normal part of balancing business needs and company capabilities that carry out each year,” the company said in a statement at the time.
McClure emphasized that Cylance is still in growth mode and that the cuts don’t signal lingering problems.
“We’re about to close another record quarter.”
