Network Security Startup DB Networks Raises $17M

DB Networks, a Carlsbad, CA-based company developing database security technology, says today it has raised $17 million in a new financing round led by Grotech Ventures. The additional cash will be used to advance its network technology and expand its business, according to a statement.

Founded in 2009, DB Networks previously raised a $2.3 million seed round, and $4.5 million in a Series B round early last year. Since then, Brett Helm has moved into a full-time role as DB Networks’ chairman and CEO. At the time, Helm also was serving as the CEO of Coradiant, a San Diego Web applications developer.

Citi Ventures and Khosla Ventures, an existing investor, also invested in the new round for DB Networks.

The company has combined a network device with machine learning and behavior analysis software to automatically detect malicious attacks against databases, which have become the ultimate target of state-sponsored espionage, cyber-crime syndicates, and malicious hacker attacks.

DB Networks says their technology also can provide insights about data moving through core networks, determines whether core network security policies are being violated, and can discover undocumented databases where stolen data might be stored.

“What these new capabilities mean is that in the case of an attack, such as what happened at Target Stores last year, our technology would immediately [notify network administrators] that there are database interactions occurring across network segments in clear violation of policy,” spokesman Mike Sabo says.

Joe Zell, a general partner at Vienna, VA-based Grotech, also joined the company’s board. Other directors include Shirish Sathaye of Khosla Ventures, retired U.S. Army General Dave Bryan, and Bill Stensrud, a networking equipment investor who joined the board last year. “DB Networks enables organizations to effectively cope with advanced threats against their critical information assets in the core network, which is really a first-of-its-kind solution for core database protection,” Zell says in a statement from DB Networks.

In addition to its headquarters in Carlsbad, about 35 miles north of San Diego, Sabo said DB Networks now has offices in Palo Alto, CA, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.