Digital-security company Catbird has attracted an additional US$10m investment from private-equity firm Medina Capital, which focuses on funding companies in the IT-infrastructure space. The investment brings Medina’s total investment in Catbird to $12m.

Catbird plans to use the new funding to accelerate its go-to-market strategy with expanded sales and marketing and to further develop its virtualization-security solution.

Manuel Medina, founder of Terremark and founding and managing partner at Medina Capital, said security stood to benefit dramatically from software-based solutions becoming the new standard in the data center. “Catbird's groundbreaking approach to enabling comprehensive compliance enforcement through a single product is exactly what customers require for their mission-critical operations in virtual and cloud environments,” he said.

“Within the next five years, software-defined security will largely replace physical appliances as the de facto approach to securing next-generation data centers. The combination of Catbird’s leading-edge technology, its team and the market opportunity made for a highly-attractive investment.”

Medina's former company Terremark, a data center services provider, was acquired by Verizon Communications for $1.4bn in 2011.

Edmundo Costa, Catbird CEO, said the investor's funding and strategic guidance will be key to further development of the company's vSecurity product. “Leveraging their vast experience in working with global enterprises and government agencies, as well as developing industry-leading products, will be instrumental to our continued growth,” he said.

vSecurity is Silicon Valley-based Catbird's software-based security solution. The company uses the architecture of virtual and cloud systems to deploy network security controls it says are more agile and precise than physical network appliances.