Kasada raises $23m, continues to revolutionise bot security
Kasada has successfully raised $23 million in Series C funding, bringing total investment in the company to $39 million.
The company states it plan to use the Series C funding to further accelerate its sales and grow its development, support and marketing departments.
The funding round was led by new investor StepStone Group (which recently acquired venture capital platform Greenspring Associates), with participation from existing investors Ten Eleven Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Reinventure (Westpac's venture capital arm), Our Innovation Fund, and Turnbull - Partners.
StepStone Group partner Hunter Somerville says, "Kasada has demonstrated impressive growth while expanding beyond Australia, with momentum among enterprise customers in the eCommerce, hospitality, travel, fintech, online gaming and internet service industries.
"The effect bots have on an organisation's profitability and customer experience has become a C-level concern. Kasada has raised the expectations of what an anti-bot solution should be.
Since its Series B funding in mid-2020, Kasada has grown its revenue by 230%, the company states, and now protects more than $20 billion in eCommerce annually and stops more than five billion monthly requests left undetected by legacy systems.
According to the company, cybercriminals are increasingly using bots to launch automated threats such as credential stuffing, web scraping, carding, and inventory hoarding against online businesses.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, two-thirds of companies have seen more frequent bot attacks, while 56% have experienced new types of bot-driven fraud.
The first generation of anti-bot defences are no longer viable as bot operators understand how these defences work and can evade them, the company states.
Recognising this, Kasada has taken a different approach to bot mitigation, designed to overcome the challenges faced by traditional methods.
The company's modern anti-bot solution is designed to provide protection by frustrating and striking back at attackers. It stops automated attacks in real-time, before they are allowed to enter an organisation's infrastructure.
This is bolstered with data analysis and machine learning (ML) from billions of bot interactions, the company states.
Unlike first-generation services, Kasada's platform doesn't rely on configuring rules, assigning risk scores, or the use of CAPTCHAs.
The platform adapts to new approaches and attacks, as bot operators evolve the tactics they use against websites, mobile apps, and APIs.
Kasada founder and CEO Sam Crowther says, "Businesses are tired of bot mitigation solutions that are difficult to operate, time-consuming to maintain, and cannot keep up with the latest tools bot operators use."
Crowther continues, "At Kasada, we've set out to make application security much easier to implement and use, while also improving its effectiveness.
"We've ensured that security doesn't get in the way of the customer experience, by eliminating friction such as CAPTCHAs that hurt online conversions - and your brand."
