Mobile app security startup Appthority raises $6.25m from Venrock, USVP

With smartphone penetration rising worldwide, resulting in the unstoppable increase in downloads and available distribution channels for available mobile apps, businesses can no longer afford to not think about riding the mobile wave.

But there is a certain degree of risk involved with using mobile applications in an enterprise environment, and fledgling companies like Appthority were founded to help organizations deal with it.

The company’s platform helps enterprises screen mobile apps for risky behaviors (like known and unknown malware used in targeted attacks, corporate data exfiltration, location tracking, keystroke recording, insecure sending of sensitive data and intellectual property exposure) across their entire fleet of devices.

Today, the San Francisco company is announcing a $6.25m round of funding led by Venrock and US Venture Partners (USVP), with Gunderson Dettmer participating.

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Ray Rothrock and Steve Krausz, partners at Venrock and USVP, respectively, will join Appthority’s board of directors as part of the financing deal.

Rothrock explains why Venrock invested in Appthority:

“Appthority has incredible market potential because they’re addressing a critical security need. The demand for enterprises to gain control over the millions of mobile apps and ultimately desktop apps is huge. The opportunity is not just malware detection, but data control and protection.

Employees are bringing their own devices to work at an ever increasing rate and change them out every six months or so. By scanning each app for risky behaviors and general data management and control, Appthority can determine which apps could be compromising your organization.”

Interestingly, Appthority automates the manual application review process, building whitelists and blacklists based on mobile app behaviors. This enables businesses to set mobile policies based on the actual behavior of applications, and match the right permissions to every level in the organization.

Appthority has partnerships in place with Appcelerator, Apperian, BoxTone, Happtique and Mocana.

The company was founded by CEO Anthony Bettini, CTO Kevin Watkins (both previously worked at McAfee and Intel) and president Domingo Guerra (ex-Brocade).