Is $11M enough to solve phone fraud? Andreessen’s Pindrop hopes so

Pindrop Security specializes in finding and stopping phone fraudsters who prey on call centers and banks. Now, with an $11 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, the startup hopes to expand its efforts around the globe.

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What Pindrop does is actually interesting. It uses a technique called Acoustic Fingerprinting to identify fraudsters, their locations, and their devices and then adds that data to a huge store of records. This database, called CallDNA, helps to sort the legitimate from the malicious callers. The company says it can pinpoint 80 percent of would-be attackers on their first call.

About a year ago, Pindrop closed a tiny $1 million round from Andreesen and a school of others, including New World Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Googler-turned-angel-investor Kevin Donahue.

Today’s funding — which saw participation from Citi Ventures, Redpoint, and Felicis Ventures* — will help Pindrop hire more engineers, operations team members, sales folks, and marketing professionals, expanding its customer base in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.

“Enterprises, and particularly financial institutions, are facing increasing volumes of attacks from sophisticated social-engineering operations,” said Pindrop cofounder and chief executive officer Vijay Balasubramaniyan in a statement on the news.

“Pindrop’s solutions are the first tool for financial institutions and enterprises to detect and stop these attacks accurately and consistently on the first call. This investment will allow us to meet the tremendous market demand we’re experiencing.”

Founded in 2010, Pindrop Security is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Image credit: stephenliveshere/Flickr

* Editor’s note: Aydin Senkut of Felicis is also an investor in VentureBeat. See our ethics statement.

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