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The Washington area is rarely thought of as a hotbed for technology companies. The region’s biggest firms have generally gravitated toward the quiet, stable business of government contracting, while start-ups tend to move elsewhere in search of growth capital.

The area’s cybersecurity companies, however, are proving to be an exception to the rule.

A handful of recent “exits” — start-up lingo for taking a company public or otherwise cashing out — are beginning to show investors that the area’s crowded cybersecurity industry can yield returns.

Tenable Network Security, a Columbia, Md.-based cybersecurity firm that helps large organizations spot network vulnerabilities, recently filed for its initial public offering after raising more than $300 million from investors. In a separate deal in late February, a company called Phishme was bought by private equity giants BlackRock and Pamplona Capital in a deal that valued it at $400 million.

All of that activity is persuading some well-known Silicon Valley investors to head east in search of opportunity.

Social SafeGuard, a Charlottesville-based start-up, recently disclosed that it has raised $11 million in new funding from a pair of West Coast funds. The first, Allegis Cyber, is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture fund known for investing in companies that utilize talent and know-how from the region’s spy agencies. The other is NightDragon Security, a fund set up by Dave DeWalt, who ran cybersecurity giant FireEye as chief executive for four years.

That investment followed a $20 million one led by Scale Venture Partners, another Silicon Valley-based fund, in a Herndon-based company called Expel. Expel is headed by Dave Merkel, who was a top executive at AOL before becoming chief technologist at Mandiant, a cybersecurity company that was bought by FireEye for close to $1 billion.

They are riding a wave that has been building for years. Cybersecurity companies in the District, Maryland and Virginia struck 47 deals with venture investors in 2017 compared with just 15 in 2011, according to an internal analysis by Paladin Capital, a D.C.-based venture capital firm. There have already been 24 such deals in the first half of 2018, suggesting the trend will continue.

All of that extra capital, combined with new federal cybersecurity spending from defense and intelligence agencies, has spawned hundreds of new companies in the D.C. area. A 2017 survey by Amplifier Ventures and the Kogod School of Business at American University found a whopping 858 D.C.-area companies engaged in cybersecurity work.

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