- Tailscale, a new kind of corporate VPN, has launched to help remote teams securely access the services they need without the long setup times of traditional VPNs. And it raised $3 million in funding.
Tailscale — which is a new kind of corporate VPN — has launched to help remote teams securely access the services they need without the long setup times of traditional VPNs. The company’s technology is based on Google’s zero-trust BeyondCorp architecture and was built using the WireGuard protocol. As a result, Tailscale makes network security accessible to teams of any scale.
How does Tailscale work? Tailscale reduces VPN setup from weeks to minutes by using a team’s existing identity provider like GSuite and Office365. And Tailscale connects authorized devices in a peer-to-peer mesh, minimizing latency, and improving reliability. Plus the product’s close integration with existing identity providers means there’s no separate list of authorized users to maintain and onboarding and offboarding team members or adding two-factor authentication is as simple as using existing workflows.
Tailscale is a fully remote team. Avery Pennarun (CEO), David Crawshaw (CTO), and David Carney (COO) previously held engineering management positions at Google Fiber and they implemented core network features in Fuchsia OS and are WireGuard project contributors.
Along with the launch, Tailscale also announced a $3 million seed round led by Heavybit with participation from Uncork Capital and others.
Key Quotes:
“It is critical that our networking infrastructure scale quickly without sacrificing security. Tailscale’s VPN lets employees connect seamlessly and securely to the bank’s servers from multiple offices and cloud providers, using the Office 365 and Windows client/server applications we already had in place. They’ve become a key part of our business continuity plan and our entire team can work from remote locations, avoiding any interruption in service – this is especially valuable in managing our business through the COVID-19 pandemic.”
-David Taylor, President & CEO of VersaBank
“Not every company can deploy Google-scale systems like BeyondCorp. We built Tailscale to bring simple security to teams of any size.”
-Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun
“Legacy VPNs were never designed with the modern workforce or fully distributed teams in mind. Tailscale’s platform is built on proven technology and is the fastest to implement, keeping employees reliably connected no matter their location.”
-Heavybit Partner Joe Ruscio
“Tailscale connections are fast and rock-solid without sacrificing ease-of-use and security. This team has been building secure networking tools for over 20 years, and it shows in Tailscale’s mature security design.”
-Uncork Partner Andy McLoughlin
