Tozny And OneIDLab To Merge, Goal Is For Channel To Be ‘Significant Source’ Of Growth

Cybersecurity companies Tozny and OneIDLab will merge and plan to use a $2.2 million seed round to help fund a new channel program.

Cybersecurity firms Tozny and OneIDLab said Tuesday that they will merge to offer customers a wider variety of security products on one platform.

Meanwhile, the new company, which will become Tozny Inc., said it has closed a $2.2 million seed round that it plans to use to support product development and sales via a new channel program.

In a statement, the companies portrayed the merger as two equals bringing their complementary strengths together—Tozny’s integrated identify and access management, privileged access management, key management and data encryption with OneIDLab’s secure remote access and decentralized identify token offerings protected by 21 patents.

“Through the merger, we are able to accelerate the delivery of a complete, integrated, end-to-end cybersecurity platform that is easy to use and flexible to deploy,” Isaac Potoczny-Jones, former CEO of the old Tozny and now CTO of the combined company, said in a press release.

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The combined company is small, with a head count of less than 20 employees.

But its lineup of customers has been includes the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, DARPA, NIST, Charles River Analytics, Jaguar Land Rover Labs and SMBs in a variety of industries.

“Our customers are increasingly asking for a risk-informed integrated solution that doesn’t require a wholesale change in their IT infrastructure,” said Jonathan DeHart, former CEO of OneIDLabs and now CEO of the combined Tozny Inc. “Our integrated platform works with existing applications, and makes it much simpler for our customers to adopt and maintain a ‘zero-trust’ posture.”

The companies did not disclose revenue numbers of the combined companies, but DeHart indicated sales are going strong.

“With our integrated portfolio, Tozny is on track to exceed 200 percent year-over-year growth in recurring revenue,” he said. “With additional products coming online this year, we are excited to be able to serve our customers’ increasing need for advanced cybersecurity solutions.”

As for the $2.2 million in seed money, OneIDLab snagged the money prior to the merger, with funding led by Rogue Venture Partners and Columbia Ventures Corporation along with prior investors. Other notable OneIDLab shareholders include In-Q-Tel and Jaguar Land Rover.

The company said the funding will help “accelerate product development and sales.”

Currently, most of Tozny’s revenue comes from direct sales, but going forward Tozny plans to start working through MSPs, MSSPs and VARs to sell to and support small and midsize businesses, DeHart said in an interview with CRN.

“We’d like [channel partners] to be a significant source of our growth,” DeHart said.

Tozny now has one employee who’s focusing on the channel, but the company hopes to have three to five channel-related employees on board by the end of the year, DeHart said.

“We have a road map to hire more as we go forward,” he said.

He said he thinks Tozny’s integrated security products will appeal to the SMB market.

“The platform we built is all stitched together into one,” he said. “We’re trying to make it as simple as possible for customers.”

Today’s array of security products offered by numerous vendors tends to overwhelm and confuse customers, especially SMB, DeHart said.

“There’s way too much complexity—and there’s a demand to make [security] easier, to make it more simple,” he said.

The combined Tozny Inc. will be based in Camas, Wash., where OneIDLab used to be based and which is about half an hour from Portland, Ore., the former headquarters of the old Tozny.