Israeli cyber security startup IronScales has closed a $1.5 million seed financing round of funding led by RDSeed, the investment arm of Rafael Development Corporation (RDC). Based in Ra'anana, the company develops what it calls the cyber security industry’s first ever employee-based intrusion prevention system with an automated phishing-mitigation response.
IronScales will use the seed money for ongoing product development and the expansion of its operations in Europe and the US.
IronScales, founded in 2013, was initially launched in the 8200 Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program (EISP), a prestigious incubator and mentoring program for early stage ventures, founded by alumni of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Intelligence Technology unit.
IronScales’ comprehensive crowd-wisdom-based phishing-mitigation solution helps protect enterprises from cyber-crimes whereby criminals attempt to deceive employees into revealing sensitive information such as usernames and passwords so they can then install spyware, remote-access Trojan horse attacks or ransomware. The IronScales solution is currently in use by dozens of customers in the financial sector, as well as security and telecom companies.
More than 90 percent of successful cyber-attacks on companies and organizations involve sophisticated, employee-targeted spear-phishing (according to Trend Micro), and damages can range from the theft of sensitive information to ransom demands.
The IronScales training program uses a “gamified” and interactive approach, simulating real-world email phishing attacks, and helping prepare employees for actual attacks. Those who fail to spot the mock attack will receive on-the-spot quick, fun, interactive training.
IronScales CEO Eyal Benishti said, "Phishing is an insidious threat to enterprises, but the existing solutions targeting the problem simply did not go far enough. That’s why we created IronScales, not only to raise awareness of phishing attacks but to then empower employees to actually block them. When workers understand how to spot phishing attacks, they become powerful assets in helping protect their enterprises from attack.”
IronScales dramatically increases employee awareness and mitigation of malicious emails and has already made a significant impact for existing customers, reducing employee click rates of malicious email and mitigating actual phishing attacks. In many of today’s most widely publicized phishing attacks of prominent global corporations, IronScales’ training, automatic detection and mitigation solution could have prevented the damage caused by spear-phishing attacks.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 19, 2016
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016