CrowdStrike Raises $30M For Data Security Platform Built To Put Adversaries On The Defensive

CrowdStrike has raised $30 million in a Series B round led by Accel Venture Partners for its security technology to identify advanced threats and put adversaries more on the defensive. Founding investor Warbug Pincus also participated in the funding.

The company was founded by former McAffee CTO George Kurtz and Dimitri Alperovitch, who was previously vice president of advanced threat research, also at McAfee. Its Falcon platform is designed to monitor a company’s data to detect zero-day threats and prevent the damage that can come from targeted attacks. It identifies malware and learns the attributes of attackers which it uses to develop a range of responses to raise the cost and risk to the adversary.

CrowdStrike represents a new breed of security companies that use sophisticated data analytics to create what amounts to invisible data meshes that detect unusual network loads and other anomalies that might signal an attack. Last week, Alien Vault raised $26 million in a Series D round for its unified security platform.

There are some common threads when comparing CrowdSrike and Alien Vault. Both share data back with their users to help protect from attacks. CrowdStrike shares information with security experts from around the world and collects analysis and reports on the latest security issues. AlienVault’s Open Threat Exchange (OTX) helps security professionals connect with their peers, find free tools for security monitoring, and learn about the latest threats and defensive tactics from industry experts and security researchers. The OTX Reputation Monitor is built into both its commercial product and open source project.