Security startup NexDefense takes $2.4M to roll out its anomaly detection system

NexDefense just announced a $2.4 million funding round that will go towards the launch and further development of a threat-exposing network called Sophia.

Sophia is NexDefense’s industrial network anomaly detection system, developed through a collaboration between the United States Department of Energy, Battelle Energy Alliance, and the Idaho National Laboratory. In 2013 NexDefense obtained exclusive rights to Sophia, and shortly thereafter it began running beta tests within a group of 70 utility organizations. Two weeks ago the company launched a full release of its product.

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But NexDefense has serious competition in this space. Thetaray, an Israel-based company, took in $10 million in series B funding earlier this year from major industry leaders like General Electric. Total funding for that company is currently unknown, but Thetaray’s anomaly detection software is already being deployed in General Electric-owned properties. Another company, Splunk, also operates in this space and has a similar offering.

The company says Sophia is less of a big data play than Thetaray, which does very granular analysis of a variety of data to detect threats. Instead, NexDefense stores broader information about information communicated within a system, like where it’s coming from and where it’s going to, to help cyber security analysts determine whether that information should appear on a whitelist (an approved set of communications). It then monitors non-whitelisted communications and alerts analysts when an anomaly arises.

Though first developed by the Department of Energy, NexDefense says that Sophia was deployed to twice as many private businesses as it was to publicly owned utilities during its beta run.

Mosley Ventures and BIP Capital led this seed round of investment, which NexDefense says was oversubscribed.