CounterStorm receives $9.5 million in Series B funding
CounterStorm leads the way in addressing an especially dangerous cyber threat — zero-day attacks. Customers like the product, and investors like the company
We reported a few weeks ago [see issue of 11/7/05] on a new solution for zero-day Internet attacks from New York-based CounterStorm. Investors like the prospects of this solution, and other solutions the company is now developing, and have given it $9.5 million in additional venture capital funding. The round B funding was led by JK&B Capital and included Paladin Capital Group’s Homeland Security Fund and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. The new funding brings CounterStorm’s total equity investment to date to more than $23 million. This latest infusion of venture capital is in addition to two Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants from DHS Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) worth up to $1.5 million. We note that CounterStorm is the first network security company simultaneously to win two SBIR Phase II grants from DHS.
JK&B Capital’s Marc Sokol did not mince words: “CounterStorm’s revolutionary technology closes a gaping hole in today’s enterprise security market. We are excited about our investment in CounterStorm, as their solution is ‘must-have technology’ for all enterprises fearing the next generation of cyber attacks.”
-read more in this company news release
More on zero-day attacks
Zero-day attacks are exploitation of previously unknown vulnerabilities before patches and signatures are available. These attacks, by definition, are among the most difficult network threats to protect against. Targeted attacks are attacks undertaken by attackers who use known or not-yet-known vulnerabilities to compromise one specific company or network. The secret to CounterStorm-1’s effectiveness is that it does not rely on signatures and can quickly and accurately identify and automatically stop destructive attacks without time-consuming false positives. The company claims that although there are new solutions available which do not require signatures for attack detection, these other solutions are still hobbled by accuracy and latency issues, sometimes taking minutes or hours to detect attacks.
