Cyber-security firm eSentire to move HQ from Cambridge to Waterloo, ramping up growth

The cyber-security firm eSentire is moving its headquarters from Cambridge to Waterloo.

The company will double its floor space in the move to Waterloo's Factory Square, said Rebecca Freiburger, vice-president of corporate communications at eSentire. The plan is to move the company's headquarters this summer.

"We're growing out of this space quickly, and Waterloo became attractive in terms of its proximity to the universities, the light-rail transit, being in and around the tech community a little bit more," Freiburger said.

Their current location in Cambridge is approximately 33,000 square feet, and the new space in Waterloo will be nearly double that at 65,000 square feet.

Factory Square is located on Phillip Street, north of Columbia Street. It's made up of former Blackberry buildings and is located near the Research and Technology Park as well as an LRT stop.

"We're going to be able to give our employees all the state of the art working environment, all the tools that they require. We're building a new brand new security operations centre and that's where the real 24-7 real threat hunting takes place globally," she said.

New round of investments

The news comes as eSentire announced Monday it has raised an additional $72 million ($47 million USD) in investments. The company will use the money to do research and development into how to use artificial intelligence for managed detection and response.

As well, they will develop ways to automate some of the processes for searching for security issues and scale it up.

The majority investor in this latest round of funding is U.S.-based Warburg Pincus, along with minority investors Toronto-based Georgian Partners and New Jersey-based Edison Partners.

Cary Davis is the managing director of Warburg Pincus and said in a release about the investment that eSentire has positioned itself well to look for solutions for security protection "with the rising volume of data and threats penetrating IT environments."