Vectra, one of the cybersecurity companies vying to beef up threat detection using artificial intelligence, announced Wednesday it raised $36 million in a Series D funding round led by new investor Atlantic Bridge.
San Jose, CA-based Vectra scans the patterns of data flowing through a client’s network in a continuous, automated hunt for suspicious activity, the company says. The aim is to identify cyberattacks as quickly as possible, enabling an immediate response that minimizes the loss of data and other damage.
Vectra, founded in 2010, plans to use its new capital on a broader global marketing campaign and for improvements to its software. To that end, the company is opening a new research and development center in Dublin, Ireland, where as many as 100 new hires will be made over a five-year period.
The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and Nissho Electronics are the other new investors in the fundraising round. Prior investors Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, IA Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, DAG Ventures, and Wipro Ventures also participated. Counting the Series D round, Vectra’s total fundraising adds up to $123 million.
Vectra has 140 employees, and operates research centers not only in San Jose, but also in Austin, TX and Cambridge, MA.
Many businesses have already been embracing security products based on artificial intelligence, and the trend is likely to continue in 2018, writes Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jon Oltsik in the online publication CSO. Competitors in the space, according to Oltsik, include Google’s parent company Alphabet, Palo Alto Networks, Bay Dynamics, Fortscale, Vectra, and E8.
Oltsik says companies are looking to services augmented by AI and by methods such as behavioral analysis, not only to speed up the detection of threats, but also to wade through the masses of data streaming through their networks to find the serious security breaches that require immediate countermeasures.
