Online security company, Shape Security, has successfully raised $20 million in Series B funding. The latest round of investment gives the total amount raised by Shape Security to $26 million. The disruptive technology the startup has to offer attracted investors that were led by Venrock. Other VC funds that contributed to the round included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Allegis Capital, Google Ventures, TomorrowVentures and Enrique Salem.
Shape Security claims that it will turn the web security game on it head as it shifts the costs from defenders to attackers. The current way firms defend themselves from hackers is by pinpointing and recording malware and botnets attack signatures. The idea is to develop a list that encompasses all past attacks to prevent future attacks. However this whole scenario can be both costly and time consuming. Shape Security claims to have created military-grade technology that throws attack signatures out the window and forces hackers to spend time to attain very little.
For now Shape Security is keeping its product under wraps and no details of exactly how the web security works is currently available. The product may have a very large market when it does come out of stealth mode as the firm itself states that large-scale web security threats have increased exponentially over the past 10 years. Security software developer Symantec approximates the global cybercrime market has a value of $388 billion per year.
The startup was co-founders Derek W. Smith, Justin Call, and Sumit Agarwal. The Shape’s team has extensive security experience and their product has definitely excited investors.
Venrock partner, Ray Rothrock, says that, “The rise of botnets and crimeware-as-a-service have led to an untenable situation where websites are now cheap to attack and expensive to defend. Shape’s technology will alter this balance. It is unlike anything the industry has ever seen before.”
Source: TechCrunch