WatchDox offers an enterprise solution to access, share and control sensitive documents on any device, applying data-centric security controls to files themselves. The company enables secure collaboration, BYOD adoption and remote document destruction, and counts more than 500 enterprises — including top financial institutions, government agencies and Fortune 500 firms — as customers. WatchDox completed the acquisition of InstallFree to add application portability and cross-platform create/edit capabilities to its file-sharing platform. The company plans to use the new financing to expand its sales team and win larger deals across financial services, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, legal, energy, manufacturing, insurance and government markets. WatchDox is based in Palo Alto and focuses on protecting critical corporate data as mobile and tablet adoption grows. WatchDox provides enterprise solutions to access, share and control sensitive documents on any tablet, smartphone, or PC. Its platform allows organizations to track a document’s journey, revoke access at any time, and remotely destroy documents if a device is lost. The company supports mobile workflows via an iOS app for viewing and annotating sensitive documents. More than 500 enterprises worldwide—including top-10 financial institutions, government agencies, and many Fortune 500 companies—depend on WatchDox solutions. Blackstone has implemented the WatchDox platform to secure board and executive communications and has also invested in the company. Blackstone joined a $9 million funding round alongside existing investors Shlomo Kramer, Gemini Israel Funds and Shasta Ventures. Confidela, doing business as WatchDox, offers a document lifecycle protection SaaS that embeds protections into files to maintain control and tracking wherever documents go. Its WatchDox solution restricts copying, printing and forwarding, allows dynamic permissions and can wipe documents after they have been downloaded. The company’s secure document sharing and virtual data room services were used by thousands of organizations as of the end of 2010. Confidela is privately held and venture-backed by Shasta Ventures, Gemini Israel Funds and security entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer. The company plans to expand its sales team, pursue larger deals and new customers across financial services, pharmaceutical/biotech, legal, energy, manufacturing, insurance and government markets. It also intends to rebrand under its flagship product name, WatchDox, and is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. Confidela makes WatchDox, document-protection software that lets users share documents with fine-grained access controls and analytics. With version 2.0, WatchDox gained compatibility with Microsoft Office and Outlook, enabling users to download, edit documents in Office and re-upload changes, and to send links directly from Outlook. Users are granted access by email and can be restricted from printing, sharing, or limited to read-only access; the system authenticates via an initial email and then remembers the user's computer. The product's reader was previously based on Adobe Flash and lacked direct collaboration, a limitation addressed by the new workflow of downloading and re-uploading edits. Confidela is actively challenging incumbents like Adobe LifeCycle and EMC IRM by offering negotiated discounts to customers who switch. The company raised a $5 million venture round last year from Gemini Israel Funds and Shlomo Kramer, and individual user pricing starts at $49.95 per month.

Total raised

$35M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jan 2013