Security firm Area 1 raises $8M to prevent phishing attacks for enterprises

Security firm Area 1 just landed $8 million in its first round of funding, which Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led.

The company focuses on early stage attacks. Its products prevent waterhole and phishing strikes, pesky exploits where an attacker pretends to be a trusted source to get credentials and other sensitive information often via email, websites, and other platforms. But that’s just the start. Hackers who launch phishing attacks are usually just at the beginning of a long destructive campaign on enterprise networks.

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“On average attackers sit for 229 days until they’re discovered. These are the types of attacks that we can get to in hours or minutes, if not a day or two,” says CEO Oren Falkowitz.

For a sense of scope, there were 450,000 phishing attacks in 2013 that caused roughly $5.9 billion in losses globally, according to a report by security firm RSA.

Falkowitz thinks that his software, aimed at early stage attacks, could help reduce the many security breaches affecting retailers, like Home Depot or Target — and most recently Sony — by identifying malicious email, providing enterprise customers with tools to mitigate the attack from causing damage, and preventing attackers from reaching their intended recipient.

Founded in 2013 by two former National Security Agency analysts, Area 1 has a team that pulls talent from Cisco, FireEye, the NSA, and The Walt Disney Company. The company plans to expand with this new round of funding. The money will expand the sort of attacks it can protect companies from.

The company had raised a $2.5 million seed round, bringing its total funding raised to $10.5 million. Area 1 is among a small selection of cybersecurity companies that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is investing in, joining Shape Security, Ionic Security, and Synack. In the past, KPCB has invested in notable security companies like Mandiant, which FireEye acquired; and Fortify, which HP bought.