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For John Ackerly, his time in the Bush Administration made him think seriously about data’s importance—not only from a security and technological perspective, but a societal one.
“I was in the room as the Patriot Act rolled through,” said Ackerly, who served as associate director for the White House National Economic Council from 2001 to 2002. At the time, the government had gained access to a lot of the data that businesses and establishments collected about U.S. citizens. However, over time, norms have changed, he added: “This was before the cloud, before Gmail, and before we’d seen major impacts on trust in our society.”
Government service runs in the Ackerly family—Will, John’s brother, spent the better part of a decade at the NSA, developing Trusted Data Format (TDF), still used today by the U.S. intelligence community for the transfer of highly-sensitive data. John left government in 2004, and Will left in 2012, as the two set out to found data security company Virtru in 2012.
“The vision was always about securing all data everywhere,” said Ackerly. “Fast forward, and we’ve hung on fiercely to that mission. We have 6,700 customers today, but there were many times when people thought we were barking up the wrong tree.”
Virtru has recently raised a $50 million Series D, led by Iconiq Capital, Fortune has exclusively learned. Other participants in the round include Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundry, and The Chertoff Group. The Series D values Virtru—whose customers include Equifax, Capital One, JPMorganChase, Salesforce, and the U.S. Department of Defense—at a $500 million valuation, doubling the company’s previous valuation. Though cybersecurity and data companies have both soared in terms of valuation and expectations in recent years, particularly within the AI boom, Virtru has been a slow burn, long-term story.
“We never maximize headline price,” said Ackerly. “We’ve always maximized the right deal at the right time to continue to build this company boulder by boulder, brick by brick.”
In Virtru’s early days, the company started with an email encryption product using Trusted Data Format. Eight years ago, Iconiq first invested in the company’s $37.5 million Series B, as Virtru started pursuing large enterprise and government opportunities. In the time since, Virtru has expanded its platform, looking to become a data security leader in an AI-driven landscape that’s made data more important than ever, said Iconiq partner Will Griffith.
“Data security is fundamental in a world that’s increasingly more connected and AI-enabled,” said Griffith. “The Holy Grail is to tag and manage data wherever it goes.”
I asked Ackerly how all his years working in data security have affected how he views data privacy—he tends to write lots of things down in journals, pen and paper, old school—and what privacy really means.
“The way I think about privacy is that it’s not secrecy,” said Ackerly. “Privacy is the power to selectively reveal yourself to the world. In this new era, that’s a foundationally important concept.”
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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