Netskope, a patroller of your employees' cloud app usage, takes $35M

Here and there, employees flip on cloud-based applications to share files, track sales leads, and just brainstorm. But different employees use different apps, making secure management a drag for IT.

Startups like Netskope have jumped on the challenge, and now investors are throwing $35 million at Netskope.

The new money will help the startup grow its sales, marketing, and research and development efforts, according a statement issued today.

Many other startups have been popping up or announcing new funding rounds in recent months, including CloudPassage, Elastica, and FireLayers. Plus, Imperva bought Skyfence.

Netskope, for its part, understands who’s using which applications, when they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it. Then it lets admins implement policies for many cloud applications, and the software takes care of translation into each application’s specific guidelines. If admins want to see an employee’s historic usage, they can do that, too.

As Sanjay Beri, Netskope’s chief executive, put it to VentureBeat in October, “Our architecture enables two huge differentiators: deep analytics and real-time policy enforcement. At a company level, these differentiators allow us to be a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer.”

Netskope launched in October.

To date Netskope has received $56.4 million in funding.

Accel Partners led today’s round; Lightspeed Venture Partners and the Social+Capital Partnership also participated.