Praesidio just raised more funding to help banks and credit unions manage their cybersecurity technology.
The Seattle-based startup has reeled in a $3.1 million investment round that pushes total funding to nearly $5 million for the year-old company. The round was led by Praesidio Chairman Jeff Lunsford and Vice Chairman Harold Brewer, while Washington Trust, Live Oak Bank, and Citizens National Bank also participated in the round.
Praesidio provides a real-time dashboard view of the cybersecurity tools a bank or credit union uses to help them understand and target potential threats while staying in-line with security and governance policies.
Edgardo Nazario, who co-founded Delve Networks and served as a group program manager at Isilon prior to its sale to EMC, helped start Praesidio back in May 2014.
“There is a proliferation of all these point solutions for cybersecurity, like a firewall or servers, and when you put those together, it can give you a picture of a bad actor,” explained Nazario, who sold Delve Networks to Limelight Networks in 2010. “But it’s very hard to correlate all those things if you don’t have something running as a layer on top of that.”
Praesidio, which has six customers — including the banks that are investing in the company — uses machine learning algorithms that detect anomalies in a network and automatically correlate security events with threat intelligence sources. The 22-person startup also acts as somewhat of an outsourced security expert team that monitors a customer’s network and informs them of potential issues.
Cybersecurity in the financial world is a big deal, with threats constantly being launched against both big and small banks. In remarks last December to the Senate Banking Committee, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association noted the seriousness of the issue.
“The destruction of financial data or the disruption of our capital markets caused by a successful cyber attack would have a ripple effect across the economy and across the globe,” SIFMA said, citing a 5-part effort to address cyberattacks against financial institutions.
Other companies attacking the problem include FireEye, Splunk, LogRhythm, HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar. Nazario said that his company differentiates itself by helping banks and credit unions of all sizes not only target cybersecurity issues, but also offer recommendations to take action.
“If you are a larger customer, we are your backstop,” he said. “If you are a smaller guy, you can give the keys to us and we are the ones watching you 24/7.”
