Shape Security, a start-up developing new web security technology, has closed a $6 million Series A financing round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's TomorrowVentures. Additional participants in the round include former Accel partnerPeter Wagner, Baseline Ventures, as well as top executives from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Ted Schlein, general partner at KPCB, has joined the company's board of directors along with Gaurav Garg, a special limited partner at Sequoia Capital and personal investor in the round.
"Shape has the opportunity to be one of the most disruptive companies the security industry has seen since the early days of anti-virus technology," said Schlein. "Led by a seasoned executive team with which I have partnered successfully before, Shape is developing innovations in cyber-security that will deeply impact how e-commerce and social network websites protect themselves and their users."
According to technology market research firm The Radicati Group, the corporate web security market is expected to grow to $2.5 billion by 2016. Businesses and consumers are under constant attack by botnets which traditional security architectures are no longer able to defend against.
"Shape's technology will shift the burden of attack from defenders to attackers," said Derek Smith, Shape Security CEO. "In doing so, Shape is aiming at the economics of web hacking and forcing attackers to spend more and more to achieve less and less."
"Cyber attacks are constantly evolving and highly persistent," said former Vodafone UK CTO Chris Burke, an investor in this round. "Relying solely on signature or reputation-based security tools leaves websites and their users vulnerable to malicious activity and data theft. Shape's technology will soon become a minimum requirement for the enterprise."
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