Bandura Cyber has rebranded as ThreatBlockr and has announced a Series A funding round that raised $5 million. The company has also added two new executives to its leadership team. George Just joins the team as Chief Revenue Officer, and Courtney Brady is the new Vice President of Marketing.
Brian McMahon, President & CEO of ThreatBlockr, said, “We’re excited to unveil our new identity that embodies our commitment to real-time, scalable, and autonomous threat defense. With ThreatBlockr, our customers are able to maximize and fortify their existing technology stack and take a proactive role in their cybersecurity defenses.
“This new brand and funding will increase our investment in making our customers more secure and will position us for continued growth. Adding George and Courtney to the team is the first step in executing against our investment plan and we’re excited to continue that investment under the new ThreatBlockr brand.”
Funding and new hires
The $5 million raised in this third Series A funding round takes the money raised by ThreatBlockr to $19.8 million (source: Crunchbase). The two previous Series A funding rounds raised $4 million and $6 million, respectively.
The four existing investors, Gula Tech, Tenfore Holdings, Grotech Ventures and Cultivation Capital, all took part in this round. They were also joined by two new investors, Saul Holdings and Lord Baltimore Capital Partners. It will be interesting to see what additional skills the new investors bring aside from their cash.
ThreatBlockr has said that the new money will be spent on growing the team and expanding the platform. The first two members of that team have been on board for a few months. Just joined in October 2021 and Brady in January 2022. Importantly, both have extensive experience in the cybersecurity market.
Just has over 20 years of experience in Network & Security startups. He has worked as both a Direct and Channel Sales Leader at Oracle (via acquisition of Talari), Nokia and Alcatel (via acquisition of Xylan).
Brady brings 15 years of cybersecurity marketing experience. She has led and built organizations from the ground up at Distil Networks (acquired by Imperva), Source Defense and NoFraud.
Are these going to be the only appointments this year, or will we see more?
What is happening with the platform?
The press release says, “With this latest round of funding, ThreatBlockr is better positioned to lead the active defense revolution in cybersecurity.” What it doesn’t say is what it plans to do. Will it spend money on new enhancements to the platform? Perhaps it will offer customers actionable intelligence to remediate systems not necessarily covered by ThreatBlockr.
It might also choose to widen the scope of what it protects. At present, it sees itself as part of the existing security stack. But attackers are increasingly targeting OT systems that are not necessarily covered by existing security stacks. Expanding the platform to protect those would be interesting.
Since July 2020, the focus, certainly in terms of news releases, appears to have been on integrations and its Cyber Intelligence Marketplace. However, there are just 17 integrations listed on the company website, and five of those are premium integrations. What new integrations is the company planning? What will they address? Will this just be more of the same, or will ThreatBlockr look at new integrations to address new types of threats?
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
ThreatBlockr has now had three separate Series A funding rounds that have raised $15 million. That they are spread across three and a half years shows it is managing a degree of bootstrapping. The question now is, where is it heading next?
$5 million won’t go far in terms of R&D spend, marketing or attracting new employees. It has found itself a nice little niche in enhancing organisations’ security stacks. However, will its investors be happy with it just sitting there?
The other unanswered question is why the name change? There is nothing in the press release to address this. Nor is there any obvious reason why it needed a change of name. Perhaps this is down to the focus that Just and Brady have brought to the company. A new name with a new focus ready for a new push into the wider market? We can only wait and see.
