Anti-bot security firm PerimeterX lands $23 million investment

The Israel- and Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company sells tools defending retailers against automated web attacks. Venture capital firm Canaan Partners led the round.

PerimeterX, an Israel- and Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company that sells tools defending retailers against automated web attacks, announced Tuesday it received a $23 million investment led by the venture capital firm Canaan Partners.

Investors have put a total of $34.5 million into PerimeterX since it was launched in November 2014.

The company sells PX Bot Defender to more than 30 customers, including Wix, Seeking Alpha, Coupons.com and luxury consignment shop The RealReal. The product aims to detect and fend off bot or nonhuman attacks including scalping, carding, scraping, fraud, check-out abuse and account takeovers.

Bot traffic surpassed human traffic on the internet in 2016, a repeat of 2012 and 2013, when nonhuman traffic also came out on top. Bot traffic will easily bypass human traffic in 2017, PerimeterX CEO Omri Iluz told CyberScoop.

When bot activity moves from annoying to nefarious, the resulting numbers are substantial, including $2.6 billion in losses in 2016 from account takeovers, $7.2 billion from advertising fraud and $950 million from gift card fraud, according to several research from firms including Gartner.

“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,” Iluz said.

PerimeterX isn’t the only substantial player in anti-bot defense. Shape Security, another Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company, took in a $40 million investment round in 2016. It’s led by ex-Google click fraud czar Shuman Ghosemajumder and CEO Derek Smith, whose resume includes stints at Raytheon and the Department of Defense.

PerimeterX has grown headcount by approximately 25 percent, to about 70 employees in 2017. In December 2016, the companh added Jon Ferrell, who previously worked with firms like Verisign and Neustar, as vice president of global sales.

Earlier in the year it added security architect Christopher Federico, who was previously a security product manager at the cybersecurity giants CloudFlare and Check Point. Many of the researchers at PerimeterX boast technical experience in the Israeli military.

Vertex Ventures and Data Collective, two existing investors for PerimeterX, joined the round. The money will go to U.S. and international expansion as well as hiring new engineers, researchers, data scientists and business development staff.

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