Castile Ventures Portfolio Company
ChosenSecurity Being Acquired
Enterprise Data Protection Leader PGP Corporation Acquires Leading Provider of On-Demand Services for Managing Trusted Identities
Waltham, MA. (Feburary 2, 2010) - Castile Ventures today announced that its portfolio company ChosenSecurity has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by PGP Corporation, a global leader in email and data encryption software for enterprise data protection. ChosenSecurity, based in Newton, Massachusetts, and its subsidiary TC TrustCenter, based in Hamburg, Germany, provide an on-demand platform that enables secure, trusted electronic transactions across individuals, servers, and mobile devices. Applications such as web-based banking rely on ChosenSecurity/TC TrustCenter identities to secure SSL transactions, authenticate mobile applications, and create legally enforceable digital signatures.
ChosenSecurity was backed by Castile Ventures, Prism VentureWorks and .406 Ventures, and grew to become the leading provider of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) security services with more than 3,500 customers across the globe. Among the company’s many achievements are its exclusive contract with CI Plus LLP, a European consortium of TV and Conditional Access Module manufacturers, to protect European Pay TV services from piracy, and its leadership in mobile code signing, as evidenced by its contract with Symbian, provider of the world's largest smart phone operating system. The company attracted strategic interest from several parties and engaged Updata Advisors to assist with its evaluation.
“Strong support from our venture investors has been instrumental in enabling us to build a growing business and to successfully pioneer important new areas of identity management,” added ChosenSecurity president and chief executive officer Bob Steinkrauss. “This acquisition represents a great outcome for our customers, employees and investors.”
“Castile has had a long relationship with many of ChosenSecurity’s talented executive team through our earlier investment in GeoTrust, and it has been a great pleasure to work with them in a second successful venture,” said Castile managing general partner, Nina Saberi. “This acquisition by PGP promises a strong complementary fit that will fully leverage the distinctive strengths of ChosenSecurity’s innovative technology platform, as well as the team’s experience as a leading exponent of security-as-a-service.”
About Castile Ventures
Castile Ventures is a top-performing early-stage venture capital firm that provides financial backing and strategic guidance to help exceptional entrepreneurs build successful technology businesses. Distinguished by the deep business and technology experience of its partners, Castile brings a unique blend of sector expertise, investment know-how, operational insights, connections to IT decision makers, and strong ties to innovators and visionaries. Founded in 1998, Castile currently manages three funds with investments including Ahura Scientific (acquired by Thermo Fisher), Aurora Networks, Brix Networks (acquired by EXFO), ChosenSecurity, GeoTrust (acquired by VeriSign), Network Intelligence (acquired by EMC), SilverStorm Technologies (acquired by QLogic), Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), Stargus (acquired by C-COR) and Trapeze Networks (acquired by Belden). For more information: www.castileventures.com.
