Aveksa Launches to Improve the Way Companies Meet Regulatory Requirements
Company raises $6 million in funding; industry veteran creates compelling new technology
WALTHAM, Mass. and SAN FRANCISCO, June 14, 2006 – Aveksa officially launched its business today as a provider of identity-driven, compliance automation software. The company was established to help customers ease the burden of regulatory compliance by enabling them to automate and continually monitor access-related controls that are critical for complying with Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, GLBA, Basel II and other security and privacy regulations.
The company also announced that it has closed $6 million in a Series A round of venture funding led by Charles River Ventures and Pequot Ventures. The funds will be used for product development, business development, recruiting and general operations. As part of the funding, Barry Bycoff, a partner with Pequot Ventures and former CEO of Netegrity, and Austin Westerling, a partner with Charles River Ventures, will join the company’s board of directors.
“We invested in Aveksa after spending six months alongside the company discussing costs associated with compliance with more than 50 vice president or C-level customer prospects,” said Austin Westerling, partner, Charles River Ventures. “We are confident that there is a very fertile market here and Aveksa has assembled a world-class team to execute.”
“Companies are frustrated with the increasing number of regulations and the escalating cost of compliance. Not only do they need to reduce costs but they need to measure their state of compliance to fully understand their business risks,” said Barry Bycoff, partner, Pequot Ventures. “We are confident that Aveksa's technology provides the solution to meet these challenges, and its leadership will capitalize on the opportunity to build a successful company.”
Using Aveksa’s open, independent business-assurance layer, compliance, risk and security professionals can take a “comply-once,” cross-regulatory approach to automate many of the historically manual, access-related compliance tasks. The unified identity view Aveksa creates is used to analyze entitlements and activity and to execute business rules that prevent and detect compliance violations. With this insight, companies gain enterprise-wide visibility into compliance issues that can affect their business, like segregation of duties, fraud or other questionable activity.
“Our enterprise clients have expressed a desire to reduce the cost of compliance and create more automated compliance processes that help reduce risk,” said Trent Henry, senior analyst, The Burton Group. “Instead of engaging separate projects for each regulation, companies are looking to implement a common, cross-regulatory approach that can test controls and acquire relevant data with far less manual labor.”
The Aveksa Team
Aveksa was founded in late 2004 by Deepak Taneja, former CTO and vice president of engineering at Netegrity. Since that time, he has focused on R&D and has built an executive team with more than 40 years of combined experience in identity management, compliance, security, storage and application development.
“Over the years in my career, it has become clear to me that security is not only a matter of concern for IT, but strategic to business as a whole,” said Deepak Taneja, founder and CEO of Aveksa. “After spending more than a year speaking with customers about the complexity of security and the demands imposed by regulatory compliance, I founded Aveksa to provide companies with a solution that reduces the burden on IT and allows businesses to use technology to meet many of their primary objectives.”
About Charles River Ventures
Founded in1970, Charles River Ventures (CRV), is one of the industry's oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs execute on their ideas to build their companies into category leaders. The firm currently focuses on start-ups that are driving fundamental change in information technology with an emphasis on mobility, the digitization of media and open-source. The firm's investment returns have consistently been among the highest in the industry, driven by its portfolio companies developing into category leaders. CRV's portfolio of start ups has included companies such as Amgen, Cascade, Continental CableVision, Chipcom, CIENA, iBasis, MCI, Sybase, Sonus Networks, and Vignette. CRV has offices in Boston and Menlo Park, Calif. For more information, visit www.crv.com.
About Pequot Ventures
Pequot Ventures is the direct venture investment arm of Pequot Capital Management, Inc.focused on today’s most dynamic startup and growth stage companies in the technology, telecommunications, defense and healthcare sectors. Pequot Ventures creates value in bringing energy and substantial sector expertise to its portfolio companies through the collective intellectual capital, deep operating experience and extensive network of its investment team. The firm leverages its unique multi-billion dollar presence across both public and private equity markets to help build competitive, sustainable businesses in fast changing environments throughout their lifecycle. Pequot Ventures accomplishes this goal in close partnership with the founders and management team of its portfolio companies. For more information, visit www.pequotventures.com.
About Aveksa
Aveksa provides the only comprehensive, enterprise-class, access governance, risk management and compliance solution. Aveksa automates the monitoring, reporting, certification and remediation of user entitlements and roles; enables role discovery and lifecycle management; and delivers unmatched visibility into the true state of user access rights. With Aveksa, business,security and compliance teams can effectively collaborate and enforce accountability. Our growing customer base includes leading organizations in financial services, healthcare and manufacturing. For more information, go to www.aveksa.com.