President Biden released a statement Monday addressing the nation’s rising cybersecurity threats. In it, he urged the private sector to “accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors” and “harden [their] cyber defenses immediately.” This was partly in response to concerns about Russian cyber attack tactics, which Biden says he has warned the public about before. As more organizations turn to private companies to secure their virtual environments, the demand for cyber defense is reaching an all-time high.
To better communicate its offerings in blocking cyber attacks, Tysons, Virginia-based cybersecurity company Bandura Cyber announced Tuesday its rebrand as ThreatBlockr. The announcement also comes with new funding, a $5 million Series A2 addition to its previous Series A funding in 2019 and 2018.
ThreatBlockr implements an active defense strategy to protect networks. Instead of a firewall using deep packet inspection to analyze everything entering a network, the company’s technology simply blocks any information coming from known nefarious IP addresses. ThreatBlockr’s list of bad IP addresses comes from over 50 providers and is continuously updated based on real-world threats. The platform also comes with 20 to 30 million threat indicators out of the box, with the option to add additional custom indicators and/or bad IP addresses.
While firewalls remain an important part of any network’s security, ThreatBlockr doesn’t believe they’re enough to protect from today’s threats.
“A typical firewall, even a high end firewall, can only handle about 150,000 third party IP addresses. We can handle 150 million, which is 1000x in real time,” ThreatBlockr president and CEO Brian McMahon told Built In. “We have customers that deploy us in front of their existing firewall and by doing that we can take anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of the load off of your firewall, which makes your firewall better at what it does.”
It also protects outbound information by catching sensitive information before it can leave a network. This helps protect against phishing attacks because even if you click on a nefarious link, ThreatBlockr aims to keep any information — like logins or credit card information — from falling into the wrong hands.
The new funding will be used primarily to grow its team, two positions of which ThreatBlockr says it has already hired for. The company recently added CRO George Just and VP of marketing Courtney Brady. McMahon told Built In the company is first investing in leadership talent with more positions on its sales and marketing teams to open soon.
The funding round was led by Gula Tech Adventures, Tenfore Holdings, Saul Holdings and Lord Baltimore Capital Partners.
