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Press Release
February 1st, 2018

Duo Security Announces Record-Breaking Year After Launching Duo Beyond, Building Foundation for Further Expansion and Product Innovation

Leading Trusted Access provider surpasses $100M annual recurring revenue milestone and welcomes industry luminaries to leadership team and board of directors

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- February 1, 2018 -- Duo Security, the leading cloud-based Trusted Access provider and pioneer in commercializing the BeyondCorp architecture, today announces a major annual recurring revenue (ARR) milestone, investments in additional leadership, and strategic partnerships with some of the largest players in the technology world in 2017.

“2017 was an important and exciting year for Duo, during which we expanded our leadership position and further solidified our place as an enduring global company for our customers,” said Dug Song, Duo Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Our goal is a lofty one: to change the way the world thinks about security, the largest geopolitical issue of our time. To do this, we are investing aggressively in R&D and deepening our bench. We are incredibly pleased to welcome some of the top technology executives in the world to our board as well as a cadre of renown talent to our world-class leadership team. We anticipate continued rapid growth in 2018, as we disrupt the security status quo by being a leader in innovating and commercializing the future of security through BeyondCorp.”

Disrupting the Security Status Quo with Duo Beyond

The way we work is changing, a trend driven by the growing mobile workforce and shift to the usage of more cloud applications. This has made the traditional security perimeter increasingly porous, as attackers no longer need to use advanced techniques to access an organization - the majority of the time, they’re going after users.

Leaders in their respective industries such as Kayak and Sophos are just a few of the many companies adjusting to this shifting landscape by implementing Duo Beyond. Launched in February 2017, Duo Beyond helps organizations enable safe, seamless access from untrusted networks without the frustration of traditional virtual private network (VPN) or network access control (NAC) experiences.

Duo Beyond’s strength lies in its ease of implementation - 75 percent of customers are up and running in less than a week compared to six to 12 months for other solutions.

Making Vision a Reality: Duo Welcomes Industry Luminaries

Duo is on a mission to not simply innovate for today, but to change the security industry as a whole. To help drive this vision forward, the company is pleased to grow its prestigious board, welcoming Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, former President of both New Relic and Salesforce, as well as Ron Gill, former Chief Financial Officer of NetSuite. This past fall, Duo also welcomed to the board Lorrie Norrington, former eBay President and McAfee board member. Rob Ward, co-founder of Meritech, was named board observer.

Customer Focus Accelerates Business Momentum

Duo’s success and reputation has made the company one of the most closely watched venture-backed companies in technology. Since its founding in 2010, the company has grown to serve more than 10,000 customers across 100 countries.

To support this growth, Duo is pleased to announce that Sydney Carey has been named Chief Financial Officer. Carey brings tremendous experience to Duo having served as CFO for a number of high-growth private and public SaaS companies, including Apttus, ZScaler, MongoDB and TIBCO. Additionally, Paul DiMarzo has been named EVP, Corporate Development. After serving for five years as CFO and seeing the company through a number of financial milestones, DiMarzo will focus his talents on strategic partnerships to continue Duo’s growth trajectory.

More Business Highlights Include:

  • Surpassed $100M ARR Threshold*: The company has consistently grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) at a rapid pace, far-exceeding $100M in ARR at the end of 2017.

  • Raised $70M Series D Round: In Fall 2017, the company raised $70 million in Series D funding at a $1 billion plus valuation. The round was led by Meritech Capital Partners and Lead Edge Capital. In addition, a new strategic partner, Workday, also participated. Duo intends to expand global operations and fund increased innovation in the Trusted Access and BeyondCorp spaces with the round.

  • Protecting More Customers Than Ever: Duo manages more than 300 million authentication events every month, and provides security insights into more than eight million smartphones, PCs and Macs used by people for work. The company serves customers from a wide-range of industries, including Facebook, Etsy, Stryker Corporation, Random House, Pixar and University of Michigan.

  • Exponential Growth in EMEA: Quadrupling to nearly 2,000 paying customers over the last two years in EMEA, Duo helps protect a number of large players in the region including University of York, Tajco, Novomatic Lottery Solutions, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, and many more. To further this rapid growth, Duo welcomes Mike East as Vice President, Sales for EMEA. East joins Duo with 27 years of IT and security experience, previously holding leadership positions at Symantec, Mandiant, FireEye and CrowdStrike.

  • Built a world class channel program: Duo's channel business grew 600 percent in the past year through a devoted strategy and commitment to building strong partnerships across the managed service providers (MSP) and security solutions providers.

“Enterprises have recognized that moving to a perimeter-less security model is not only the right architecture, but also one that enables employee productivity and the safe adoption of modern IT technologies,” said Jon Oberheide, Duo Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. “Moving to a BeyondCorp or Zero Trust security architecture isn't an overnight thing, but a journey that we've been fortunate enough to help our customers embark on.”

Rapidly Scaling a People-Centric Organization

Alongside the growth of its customer base, Duo also made exciting people-focused investments in 2017, maintaining its reputation as an employer of choice.

To ensure continued strategic growth internally, Duo has grown its leadership bench by welcoming Steve McElfresh as Senior Vice President, People. McElfresh joins Duo from New Relic, bringing more than 19 years of global HR leadership experience, with a passion for building diverse, inclusive and organizationally enduring companies. In addition, Ambrosia Vertesi has been named VP People, Growth Initiatives, where she will focus on enabling scale and development for an increasingly global organization.

Some People Highlights Include:

  • Tripled Headcount since 2016: In two years, Duo has nearly tripled its staff, from 200 to nearly 600 as of January, 2018.

  • Two New Offices: In 2017, Duo opened new, larger offices in both Austin, Texas, and San Mateo, California to support the rapidly scaling company. These offices are in addition to Duo’s headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, an office in London, England, and a remote workforce spread across all time zones.

Leading Technology Companies Partner with Duo to Safeguard Users

The strength of Duo’s reputation and product has translated into demand for integrated technical partnerships from a number of industry leaders, including:

  • VMWare: Partnering with VMware, Inc. and integrating with their Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution, VMware AirWatch, Trusted Endpoints was released for Duo Beyond, helping organizations identify managed and unmanaged mobile devices attempting to access their corporate applications - drastically simplifying the enforcement of mobile security policies. Duo is one of the first to give organizations the capability to identify and govern unmanaged devices in their IT environment.

  • Microsoft: Integration of Duo two-factor authentication technology with Microsoft Entra ID (Microsoft Entra ID), offers thousands of Microsoft Entra ID Premium customers another way to quickly secure critical cloud applications such as Microsoft Office 365.

  • Workday: Workday complements its robust, built-in security with seamless integrations that enable customers to leverage Duo’s two-factor authentication functionality right within Workday’s user interface. With this joint, expanded toolset in one experience, organizations can further strengthen safeguards to mitigate phishing incidents and ensure validated, trusted access to Workday anytime, from any device.

*Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the cumulative annualized value of all of Duo’s customer subscriptions.

About Duo Security

Duo helps defend organizations against breaches through its easy and effective cloud-based Trusted Access product suite. The company verifies the identity of users and the health of their devices before granting them access to applications. Duo’s intentional balance of security and usability has led the company to be a trusted partner to thousands of customers worldwide, including Dresser-Rand, Etsy, Facebook, K-Swiss, Random House, Yelp, Zillow, Paramount Pictures, and more. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company maintains offices in Austin, Texas; San Mateo, California; and London. Visit duo.com to find out more.