Alexander Gounares
Alexander Gounares

A Seattle area startup by the name of Polyverse believes it has developed new technology to stop cyberattackers in their tracks, and it has raised $2 million in fresh funding to protect organizations’ server and cloud applications from end-to-end.

The funding follows a $1 million round last summer. Polyverse is led by Alex Gounares, who previously served as CTO of AOL and corporate vice president at Microsoft. Prior to starting Polyverse, Gounares was CEO of Concurix Corporation, which he sold earlier this year to San Mateo, Calif.-based Strongloop in a deal of undisclosed size.

Kirkland-based Polyverse uses what it calls “moving target defense” to prevent cyberattacks, storing data in an array of containers instead of storing millions of records in a few databases. The company claims this system “completely undermines the economics of cybercrime,” making it so “cyberthieves must endlessly rethink their attack strategies.”

Polyverse also says the the technology — which integrates with existing hardware and software systems — self heals, creating new containers in a method that’s similar to wiping a hard disk.

Containers are continuously created from last known good state and put into use servicing requests,” the company writes in a white paper. “After a brief time (typically five seconds), containers are then garbage collected. Any malware that may have been inserted is thus automatically removed. Among other advantages, this makes it far more difficult for cyberattackers to execute advanced-persistent-threat (APT) attacks.

SpringRock Ventures led the round, with SpringRock’s Kirsten Morbeck noting in a release that “Polyverse has an exceptional team building on a paradigm shift in cybersecurity.” Polyverse employs just under 20 people.

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