[ad_1]
A large portion of online traffic now comes from bots, both good and bad, but AI is driving the latter. From DDoS attacks to information mining, there's a renewed barrage of threats that businesses must deal with.
According to cybersecurity entrepreneur Nikita Rozenberg, the impact is more severe for SMEs. “The main difference is that large companies can usually survive in this situation. But most of these threats can kill small businesses.”
This inspired him to create Blackwall, an Estonia-based startup formerly known as Botguard that shares similarities with Cloudflare, Imperva, and others, but with a focus on SMEs.
This approach also influenced its product roadmap: it recently launched an ad fraud prevention product that prevents e-commerce websites from having their ad spend consumed by bots.
The pace at which the startup has been launching new apps and plans to continue doing so is a factor that attracted Dawn Capital, the B2B-focused venture capital backing Blackwall's €45 million (approximately $49.2 million) Series B round.
The funding will further help develop new products beyond its flagship product, Gatekeeper, a reverse proxy which inspects traffic, analyzes it, also using AI, and filters out malicious requests in real time. These threats include bots, but also intruders, for example.
That's also why Blackwall was rebranded to reflect its expanded reach. Rozenberg co-founder Denis Prochko came up with the new name, a nod to the video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which a complex firewall called Blackwall protects the Rogue AIS network.
Gaming tradition aside, Blackwall's reality is a lower profile. To adapt to SMEs, it needs its offering to be easy to use and automated, which means it's often invisible to end users. This is also because Blackwall doesn't sell directly to SMEs, instead opting for what Rozenberg calls a "channel model."
This strategy involves partnering with intermediaries such as hosting service providers, managed service providers, and e-commerce platforms looking to improve their margins. Offering Blackwall to your clients can be a differentiating factor and also a way to reduce the costs incurred by malicious traffic.
This is also why Blackwall is targeting midmarket players who can't afford to spend millions on internal product development, like its larger competitors like Google, and need external support to address this problem. On the contrary, the startup found this sales strategy particularly fruitful.
Partnering with over 100 of these players has helped Blackwall scale rapidly since its launch in 2019. With a team of 65 people, it says its services are now deployed on over 2.3 million websites and apps.
The new funding will help it double its staff and expand into the US and APAC markets. It will have support from Dawn Capital, as well as venture capital firm MMC Ventures, which participated in this round after leading the startup's Series A. €12 million just a year ago (approximately $13.1 million).
[ad_2]
and select 