Lookout Mobile Security raises $40 Million for Phone Security

Lookout Mobile Security, the San Francisco-based mobile security software developer, has recently announced the end of a new funding round which has brought the company the amount of $40 million for its smarphone security system. This new funding round has been led by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture fund which is co-led by Marc Andreessen, one of the investors at Silicon Valley. Current investors have also participated in this funding round, which means that the funding round also reunites the names of Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and Index Ventures.

This amount of money may seem incredible for a company which produces mobile software, such as Lookout Mobile Security, but, if we are taking into consideration the fact that mobile phones, especially Androids, are a growing market, we can understand why these investors decided to put so much in a single project. As a matter of fact, it is becoming obvious that the tendency is that of transforming mobile phones into computer platforms, meaning that it will become more and more important to find the suitable solutions in order to protect them from all sorts of threats.

At the moment, Lookout already provides protection software for more than 12 million smarphone and tablet users. Their software protects these devices from malware, spyware and identity theft attempts. Moreover, this software also provides backing up systems for personal data. It also provides information on the location of a stolen or lost phone. The Lookout application is powered by the Lookout’s cloud-based Mobile Threat Network. This cloud specializes in analyzing global threats. In the case of a threat being found, the system automatically blocks it by a system of over-the-air updates to smarphones. This actually means that this application provided by Lookup is efficient in detecting and dealing with a threat in just a matter of minutes.

As John Hering, the chief executive and co-founder of Lookout Mobile Security said, the company intends to use the money raised in this new funding round in order to create new products, but also in order to expand at a global level, which automatically means that in order to hire new personnel as well. After the end of this new funding round, Jeff Jordan from Andreessen Horowitz is going to join the company’s board.

The business is expected to grow fast. Gartner considers that the mobile phone shipments are to reach the value of a billion in 2015, far outpacing PC shipments. However, as the incidence of malware is rapidly increasing when it comes to phones as well, it is only normal for the company to expect to have a rapid growth. At the moment, the persons who use the Lookout’s services are on 400 mobile networks in 170 countries. This means that their audience is incredibly large. Up to the date, Lookout has managed to raise the total amount of $76.5 million.