Blackwall, based in Estonia, increases 45 million euros B series to protect SMEs from malicious online traffic
A huge part of online traffic now comes from bots, good and bad – but AI stimulates the latter. DDOS attacks on scratching, there is a renewed threat dam in which companies have to face.
According to cybersecurity entrepreneur Nikita Rozenberg, the impact is more serious for SMEs. “The main difference is that large companies can generally survive this. Most of these threats can just kill small businesses. »»
It inspired him to start MaleA startup based in Estonia formerly known under the name of Botguard which shares similarities with Cloudflare, Imperva and others, but by emphasizing SMEs.
This objective also influenced its product roadmap: it recently launched a prevention product for advertising fraud which prevents electronic commerce websites from having their advertising expenses consuming by bots.
The rhythm to which the startup has launched new applications and plans to continue to do so is a factor that has resonated in Dawn Capital, the B2B VC company which supports the 45 million euros in Blackwall (around $ 49.2 million).
Funding will help further develop new products beyond its flagship product, Gatekeeper, a reverse proxy This inspects traffic, also analysis – also using AI – and filters malware in real time. These threats include bots, but also intruders, for example.
This is also why Blackwall renamed to reflect its extended scope. The co-founder of Rozenberg, Denis Prochko, proposed the new name, a nod to the video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which a complex firewall called Blackwall protects the net against the Rogue Ais.
Aside from the video game game, Blackwall’s reality is a lower profile; To adapt to SMEs, it needs its offer to be both easy to use and automate, which means that it is often invisible to end users. It is also because Blackwall does not sell directly to SMEs and rather opted for what Rozenberg calls a “channel model”.
This strategy consists in associating intermediaries such as accommodation service providers, managed service providers and electronic commerce platforms that seek to improve their margins. Offering BlackWall to their customers can be a differentiation factor and also a way to reduce the costs incurred by malicious traffic.
This is also why Blackwall opts for players on the intermediate market who cannot spend millions for the development of internal products like their greatest competitors such as Godaddy, and need external support to manage this problem. Conversely, the startup found this sales strategy particularly fruitful.
The partnership with more than 100 of these players has helped Blackwall to evolve quickly since its launch in 2019: with a team of 65 years, it claims that its services are now deployed on more than 2.3 million websites and applications.
The new financing will now help him double his workforce and double his expansion on the American and Apac markets. He will count on the support of Dawn Capital to do so, as well as in the company VC MMC Ventures, which participated in this Tour after having directed the startup Series 12 million euros has Only a year ago (about $ 13.1 million at today’s exchange rate.)
