DataVisor Scoops Up $14.5M To Push Big Data Security

DataVisor is using Big Data to expose cybercriminals and protect both websites and mobile apps from their devastating attacks.

With this goal in mind, the security startup announced yesterday (Oct. 13) that it locked down $14.5 million in Series A funding, led by GSR and NEA, which will be used to grow the company’s global presence and disrupt the security solutions it said are no longer handling modern-day threats effectively.

“The rapid expansion of online services and mobile apps has led to an explosion of user accounts, ushering in the ‘billion-user era,'” Yinglian Xie, CEO and cofounder of DataVisor, said in a company blog post.

“Cyberthieves are using this growth to their advantage, using fake and compromised accounts to easily hide in the shadows and conduct various forms of fraud against websites and mobile apps. Our mission is to build and restore trust in online communities and services and to protect every one of us legitimate users by finding the hidden enemy lurking within them,” Xie explained.

DataVisor’s software utilizes an analytics engine operating within a Big Data platform to discover unknown malicious campaigns early by analyzing billions of events per hour, the company said.

“DataVisor’s technology is uniquely adept at finding malicious accounts hiding within an online service,” said Jon Sakoda, general partner at NEA and DataVisor board member.

“Well-organized attack campaigns have armies of ‘sleeper cells’ that look and behave like benign accounts, only to wake up all at once and launch a full-scale attack on an online service. DataVisor is the only security company able to root out these ‘sleeper cells’ before they awaken and incur any damage.”

The company’s founders are no strangers to Internet security. Both Xie and Fang Yu, CTO, have PhDs in computer science and worked together at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley for seven years before starting DataVisor.

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