Security software maker SecureAuth Corp. has leased new headquarters at Irvine Spectrum to accommodate a hiring surge as it expands its services.
The company’s new 27,000-square-foot office at 8845 Irvine Center Drive houses its growing core software development team and support staff, as well as the SecureAuth University, a training facility where resellers and other IT experts can earn certificates in various cybersecurity products.
SecureAuth plans to increase its work force by about 50 positions to 150 by the end of next year.
“We’re really bullish on Southern California,” said Chief Executive Craig Lund. “It’s a little more expensive for development, but we think it’s worth it because of the quality of people.”
That sentiment has helped OC carve out a growing niche in cybersecurity through a cadre of burgeoning and established players backed by venture capitalists and a proposed research institute at University of California-Irvine dedicated to one of the hottest segments in the technology sector.
“There’s a hotbed in security in Orange County,” Lund said.
Demand Up
SecureAuth, which recently established a national consortium of private and public entities seeking to solve the growing problem of data breaches, is the center of the hotbed, figuratively and geographically.
Sales of the company’s subscription software jumped 40% in each of the past four years, and it projects its overall sales to pass $30 million this year through a growing base of 600 customers that primarily are in the Fortune 1000 ranks, including Southwest Airlines, Qualcomm, HBO, Western Union and Electronic Arts.
Its flagship SecureAuth IdP has gotten strong demand from the public and medical sectors, including clients such as the Los Angeles Police Department, Adventist Health System, the U.S. Navy, the University of Maryland and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
“Growth is coming from bigger dollar amounts from bigger customers,” Lund said.
The company has several backlogged deals in the $250,000 to $500,000 range on the books toward the end of the year. Others are in excess of $2 million, and a few more top $1 million.
Its software verifies the identity of employees, customers and consumers allowed access to physical and virtual networks and provides device recognition through what’s called adaptive authentication, in which a user seeking access is identified from a known device used on a previous login or through an unfamiliar device.
Clearance is confirmed through several applications, including single and multifactor authentication and biometrics, or how a user types or uses a particular device.
SecureAuth Cloud Access, which the company released in August, is targeting small and midsized markets but holds benefits for larger customers interested in a more hybrid, flexible pricing model, according to Lund.
Change on the Way?
“We think we’re going to do really well with the cloud product in the [small and midsize business] space,” he said. “We’re looking at a significant amount of business in the fourth quarter.”
About 85% of SecureAuth’s business is in the U.S. The rest is centered in the United Kingdom and Australia. Expect that to change if it follows in the footsteps of fellow Irvine security software makers Cylance Inc. and CrowdStrike Inc.
CrowdStrike last year raised $100 million in a Series C round led by Google Capital. Cylance in June matched that funding benchmark, among the highest in OC tech history, in a Series D round that attracted several prior investors, including lead backer Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, and was.
Denver-based competitor Ping Identity was acquired that same month by private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners for a reported $600 million.
Vista, which has offices in Austin, Chicago and the Bay Area, is the majority owner of DealerSocket, a San Clemente-based maker of customer relationship management software.
Room to Grow
SecureAuth’s five-year lease at its new headquarters is nearly double the space of its prior operation, which was split between two nearby buildings.
“We wanted to get everybody under one roof,” Lund said.
The former tenant was M86 Security, a data and security protection services provider acquired four years ago by Chicago-based Trustwave, which provides cloud-based and web security IT services.
Trustwave is now at 5 Park Plaza in Irvine.
