Cool Startup Shape Security

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Shape Security, based in Mountain View CA, has received $26M in VC funding, and is backed by Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. It currently has about 58 employees, many with extensive security backgrounds. In a nutshell, they offer security appliances that protects against bots. It is an anti-bot technology which they call bot walls. Their technology incorporates the same techniques that are being used in malware, known as polymorphic code.

Threat Landscape

Cyberattacks are an automated process, whereby attacks occur on a massive scale, thus lowering the overall cost of attacks. If cybercriminals wish to attack a bank, they take control of millions of PC’s, distributed throughout the nation, and start entering the login information, making the transactions seem normal to the bank. The login screen is always the same, making it vulnerable to attack.

Shape Security defends against this kind of attack, by changing every page of the website, every time the browser downloads the web page, making it a moving target. Thus, the code embedded in the web application, identifying the username and password, is changed completely, every time, making it impossible for the bot to find the login section.

Ted Schlein stated that the company has the potential to disrupt the entire security industry, in a big way. I agree with him. Not only will it impact the security industry, but also the CDN industry. Cool Startup Shape Security

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