Damballa locks up about $8.2M of $9M round for botnet security tech

October 15th, 2009

By Allan Maurer

ATLANTA – Damballa Inc., a security company that protects enterprises from bot attacks, has raised nearly $8.2 million from West Coast investors, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Investors in the round, which the filing says is targeted at $9 million, include Palomar Ventures, InterWest Partners and Sigma Partners, all California-based, Atlanta’s Noro-Moseley Partners and Imlay Investments.

The company revealed the funding in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has not yet responded to TechJournal South’s request for comment.

It previously raised a $2.5 million first round in 2006 from Sigma Partners, Nor-Moseley, and Imlay Investments, followed by a $6 million second round in 2007. InterWest led the second round with participation from Atlanta-based Noro-Moseley Partners and Sigma.

Earlier this year Damballa was a Red Herring 100 company and was one of TechJournal South’s Tech 50 companies in a previous year.

Damballa focuses exclusively on bot-driven targeted attacks that infiltrate enterprise environments and steal valuable information.

The term botnet refers to a collection of compromised machines running programs, usually referred to as worms or Trojan horses under a common command and control. They can wreak havoc on servers with the theft of application serial numbers, login IDs, and financial information such as credit card numbers.

The company says its real-world research indicates 3 percent to 5 percent of enterprise assets are compromised with targeted attack/bot malware – even in the presence of the best and most up-to-date security tools.

Global 1000 corporations, large Internet service providers, OEM partners and government agencies use Damballa’s signatureless solutions and industry-leading research to reinforce existing security infrastructure and stop hidden Internet attacks.