PerimeterX Raises $23M to Expand AI-Driven Behavioral Threat Protection Platform That Prevents Bot Attacks

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 25, 2017 -- PerimeterX, a provider of behavior-based threat protection technology for cloud, web and mobile, has secured $23 million in Series B funding to accelerate the development of its bot attack prevention technology. Canaan Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures and Data Collective (DCVC). With the funding, PerimeterX will expand in the U.S. and internationally, and broaden its platform into new areas. Today, PerimeterX’s web-based Bot Defender product is the market leader, analyzing billions of events daily and blocking hundreds of millions of bot attacks every day.

All companies operating online today face a growing number of increasingly sophisticated attacks by malicious bots. In 2016, bot activity caused $2.6 billion of losses from account takeovers^[1], $7.2 billion in advertising fraud^[2] and $950 million in electronic gift card fraud^[3]. In her 2017 Internet Trends Report, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers noted that in 2016 bot-generated traffic surpassed human-generated traffic on the Internet.

“Next-generation automated web attacks today threaten the integrity of the web by impersonating humans and abusing business logic rather than breaching systems, and they even harm the integrity of our political system by spreading fake news,” said Omri Iluz, CEO of PerimeterX. “With cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning, the PerimeterX platform technology is purpose-built to address this problem head-on by detecting and blocking the most advanced malicious bots in real-time, at any scale.”

Modern bots attempt to execute a variety of damaging acts such as account takeover, web scraping, carding, checkout abuse and online fraud. The latest generation of bots attempt to impersonate real users and real system behaviors. As a result, they can easily evade detection by legacy tools such as Web Application Firewalls.

“Malicious bot attacks hurt a company’s bottom line and erode consumer trust in a brand. Current strategies are not proving effective,” said Joydeep Bhattacharrya, partner at Canaan Partners, who joined the company’s board as part of the Series B financing. “PerimeterX’s technology not only stops malicious bots in their tracks – it does so at consumer scale.”

To separate the actions of bots from those of normal users, PerimeterX uses artifical intelligence and machine learning to identify behaviors that are unlikely to represent human actions – for example, landing a mouse directly on a button rather than scrolling towards it up or down the screen. As PerimeterX gathers more information about how people interact with a site, it builds more accurate models of what constitutes human versus bot behavior. This behavior based technology allows PerimeterX to detect the most sophisticated new forms of bot attacks.

PerimeterX’s API integrates seamlessly with nearly any component of a company’s technology infrastructure. As a result, DevOps teams can quickly incorporate real-time behavioral analytics into their work, giving them maximum flexibility.

“Analyzing user behavior has long been a predictive staple of search engines and credit card fraud detection. It is tried, it is tested, it works and now companies that are serious about defending against bot attacks and other new cyber threats need to adopt behavior-based tools to guard against more sophisticated attacks,” says Eric Ogren of 451 Group. 

PerimeterX’s rapidly growing list of customers includes companies in the Fortune 500, the Alexa Top 500 and the Internet Retailer 100. The company was recently named a 2017 Gartner Cool Vendor and included on Dark Reading’s list of 20 Cybersecurity Startups to Watch in 2017. In 2017, the company has added new offices in London and Miami and significantly expanded its leadership team.

About PerimeterX
PerimeterX prevents automated attacks by detecting and protecting against malicious web behavior across e-commerce, enterprise SaaS, and media. By analyzing the behavior of humans, applications and networks, PerimeterX catches real-time automated attacks with unparalleled accuracy. Its proprietary technology protects your business and web infrastructure by preventing a full range of attacks from earlier generation bots to hijacked browsers, to new and emerging fourth generation attacks that do not trigger security mechanisms. With PerimeterX, businesses deploy seamless integration within minutes into their DevOps process. To learn more, please visit www.perimeterX.com

^[1] according to the ACG Group
^[2] according to the Association of National Advertisers
^[3] according to CEB Tower Group

Media Contact Info:

Corinna Krueger 
PerimeterX 
[email protected] 

Merritt Group 
[email protected]