Home ANTBITES (Media Releases) This cybersecurity startup has landed $6.5 million from two Aussie venture capital...

This cybersecurity startup has landed $6.5 million from two Aussie venture capital firms

0

Kasada, a leading cyber security vendor, this week announced a $6.5 million capital raising from the CSIRO-backed venture firm Main Sequence Ventures and the Westpac-backed Reinventure Group.

Kasada founder and CEO, Sam Crowther said the company will leverage the funds to accelerate its engineering, research & development, and go-to-market expansion.

“From a standing start a little over four years ago, Kasada is now trusted by ASX 100, Forbes Global 2000, and mid-sized enterprises in Australia, the US and the UK,” Mr Crowther says.

“We have taken an idea for better security and now demonstrated its capability in boardrooms in New York and Chicago.”

Who is injecting funds into Kasada?

Mike Zimmerman, a founder and general partner of Main Sequence Ventures CSIRO Innovation Fund, led the investment, and will join Kasada’s board of directors.

Mr Zimmerman is an investor and entrepreneur with deep experience building technology companies, particularly growth enterprise SaaS.

“Main Sequence aims to partner with Australia’s most ambitious founders solving large, difficult problems, and the ever-increasing challenge of stopping sophisticated cyberattacks certain qualifies,” Mr Zimmerman says.

“Most organisations don’t realise that the majority of their web traffic is non-human, controlled by sophisticated criminals impersonating humans to deceive, defraud and disable. Kasada’s Polyform platform is a world-leading solution to help humans fight back against bad bots.”

Danny Gilligan, Co-founder and Managing Director at Reinventure Group, continues his advisory role on the Kasada board.

Reinventure is known for its ability to create high- functioning partnerships, between large corporates and innovative start-ups, and deep expertise in the emerging data economy.

“We continue to be impressed by the brilliance of the Kasada team, the reaction of sophisticated customers to their capability and the growing realisation of the importance of protecting data assets as the data economy matures, says Mr Gilligan.

“While protection against cyber criminals is critically important, organisations are increasingly exposed to more banal threats from scraping attacks from competitors and other commercial actors and Kasada is the perfect solution.

“Kasada is also tapping into a rapidly growing market. By 2020 spending on enterprise firewalls and cloud security is forecast to reach $17.2 billion annually. Kasada is part of the exciting new wave of cybersecurity, thwarting attackers with economic disincentives rather than technological barriers.”

Danny Gilligan, cofounder Reinventure Group

What exactly does Kasada do?

Kasada Polyform detects and mitigates malicious web traffic that other security measures are unable to identify.

Kasada’s web security service protects websites and web applications in real-time from user account takeovers, fraud, data-scraping and other attacks that significantly disrupt user experience of websites.

Kasada Polyform also reduces bot-related network bandwidth and computing infrastructure costs, and improves the effectiveness of digital marketing. The demand for better web security continues to accelerate because of the increasing volume and sophistication of criminal activity.

“In today’s highly connected world, a secure digital experience is key to building and retaining trust,” says Mr Crowther. “Smart businesses know cyber security, data protection and customer experience are inextricably linked.

“As cyber criminals increasingly use automation to attack websites and web applications, automation is therefore the key to keeping up where human analysts cannot. Kasada provides protection against the dark web’s inventory of stolen user credentials and automated fraud tools.

“Kasada Polyform secures millions of e-commerce and other internet transactions, every day. It shifts the balance of power from the adversary to the enterprise by making attacks computationally more expensive for attackers and thereby disrupting their business model.

“Kasada improves business decision making, and the bottom-line costs of computing infrastructure.”

AustCyber CEO Michelle Price says Australia has “ a thriving and dynamic, globally competitive cyber security sector.”

“Kasada’s ability to complete a capital raise through Main Sequence and Reinventure Group is not only a strong affirmation of the scalability and applicability of Kasada’s capability offering, but further proof that Australian cyber security capability is world-class, and the industry is growing and maturing,” Ms Price says.

“This is a wonderful achievement for Kasada, with an all-Australian investor round.”