WASHINGTON — SpiderOak, a firm that specializes in cybersecurity for space systems, announced new strategic investors. 

The new investors are Accenture Ventures, Raytheon Technologies’ RTX Ventures, and Stellar Ventures, the companies announced May 18, although they did not disclose the value of the agreements.  The strategic investments by these firms are separate from the $16.4 million Series C funding round that SpiderOak announced in January. 

“This investment will accelerate SpiderOak’s deployment of zero-trust, end-to-end data security solutions for commercial and government customers operating in space,” SpiderOak’s CEO Dave Pearah said in a statement.

The company, founded in 2007, developed a cybersecurity system called OrbitSecure used to protect satellites and ground infrastructure. About half of SpiderOak’s business is from government contracts.

Accenture executive Tom Patterson said the company invested in the OrbitSecure technology to “help our clients with the expertise and software needed to achieve a zero-trust approach to space-based cybersecurity.” Accenture provides professional services business in the space sector, focused on satellite communications, ground station as-a-service, remote IoT device-to-satellite data and Earth observation data.

Space systems used for national security are “very much at risk from cyber threats,” said Daniel Ateya, president and managing director of RTX Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Raytheon Technologies. 

“We see our investment in SpiderOak as a key enabler in helping our clients maintain, secure and resilient data communication and storage in these highly contested environments from ground to LEO to cislunar,” said Ateya.

Celeste Ford, managing director of Stellar Ventures, said SpiderOak is “uniquely positioned to address this growing need with their zero-trust approach at the data level to assure users of the most secure systems operations.”

Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense...