Hunters has raised $68 million in Series C funding, and shifted its brand messaging from Open XDR to Security Operations Center (SOC) platform capabilities, according to an MSSP Alert comparison of the Series C and Series B funding announcements.
Indeed:
- The Series B funding announcement -- from August 2021 -- mentioned Open XDR at least nine times and SOC four times.
- The Series C funding -- from January 2022 -- mentioned Open XDR once (from a third-party observer) and emphasized SOC 14 times.
The reasoning for the brand shift? We don't know for sure. But startup Stellar Cyber has gained considerable MSSP and MSP partner momentum with its own Open XDR platform. Also, dozens of endpoint, network and cloud security companies have jumped onto the XDR (eXtended Detection and Response) term as a way to describe their end-to-end cyber capabilities. Also, Deloitte is now muscling into the market with a Managed XDR push. Meanwhile, unicorn Arctic Wolf has bet its brand on the security operations term ahead of a potential IPO.
Hunters Series C Funding: Next SOC Platform Moves
Hunters will use the Series C funding to innovate its SOC platform and services, strengthen its sales and partnerships across North America and EMEA and invest in talent, CEO Uri May said.
The Series C funding brings Hunters' total financing to $118 million. It comes after Hunters secured $30 million in a Series B financing round in August 2021 and doubled its team during that year.
Hunters provides an SOC platform designed to help security teams mitigate cyber threats faster and more reliably than security information and event management (SIEM) tools, the company asserted. The platform offloads manual security tasks and provides insights that analysts can use to accelerate risk mitigation.
In addition, security teams can leverage cloud connectors to integrate Hunters' platform into their existing security tools or connect it directly to an SIEM, the company said. That way, they can ingest security logs, events and telemetry from dozens of data sources both on premises and in the cloud.
How Can MSSPs Use Hunters' SOC Platform?
Hunters has established eXtended detection and response (XDR) integrations with security products across the following areas:
- Cloud
- Endpoint
- Identity
- Network
Hunters also has a partner program for MSSPs and other technology providers. The program provides channel partners with the ability to use Hunters' SOC platform to ingest data from myriad security products and IT tools.
Additional insights from Dan Kobialka.