Federal demand for cybersecurity has firm Tanium booming

Cybersecurity firm Tanium has raised $120 million in its third round of funding in just over a year, it said Wednesday, as federal demand for its services continues to grow.

This latest round brings the company’s value to the $3.5-billion mark, making it the highest-valued venture-backed cybersecurity firm worldwide, according to research firm CB Insights.

{mosads}According to Tanium, its software can sweep every device on a given network within 15 seconds, giving security officers an up-to-the-minute assessment of their enterprise and allowing them to deploy a fix or uncover a hack in real time.

Experts say that before Tanium was available, such a comprehensive sweep could take days or even weeks.

The firm recently opened a Washington, D.C., office to support what Tanium called its “rapidly growing public sector footprint.”

Nearly every federal defense and intelligence agency uses Tanium, Bryan Taylor, a partner with the lead investor of this round, told Reuters.

“It’s not just the [Department of Defense] but every three-letter federal agency,” Taylor said.

Growing cyberattacks on government agencies — most notably the massive hack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — have inflated federal budgets for digital defenses.

The OPM and the Department of Defense on Tuesday awarded a $133-million contract to provide identity theft protection services for those affected by the massive hack, part of at least $500 million the government is planning to spend to boost fraud protection services for both past and future hacking victims.