BehavioSec boosted by $17.5m funding
Behavioural biometrics company BehavioSec landed $17.5 million in funding, bringing its total funding to almost $26 million, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (FinTech Futures‘ sister company).
The Series B round was led by Trident Capital Cybersecurity with Cisco Investments, ABN Amro, and existing investors Octopus Ventures and Conor Venture Partners also contributing. The Sweden-based firm will use the funds to expand operations and relocate its headquarters to the US. This comes after BehavioSec’s expansion to the US last April.
Since it was founded in 2009, BehavioSec says it has secured billions of transactions for 40+ million users. The company’s flagship offering technology leverages machine learning to verify a user’s identity by how they interact with their device. This layered and continuous approach takes place in the background so as not to interfere with the user experience.
Alberto Yépez of Trident Cybersecurity cites two main reasons for the firm’s investment in BehavioSec: “We decided to invest in BehavioSec given production deployments authenticating user sessions for some of the most sophisticated financial institutions and governments around the world. In addition, the company continues to lead the innovation in behavioural biometrics through close partnership with leading cybersecurity vendors and government agencies, including DARPA.”
However, there will be increased competition. Last October, Zighra launched a continuous authentication solution that leverages behavioural cues. Additionally, companies such as BioCatch, NuData Security, and IBM Security Trusteer all have offerings similar to BehavioSec’s solution.
Last November, BehavioSec teamed up with Crossmatch to add keystroke capture to Crossmatch’s authentication platform.
