A huge portion of online traffic comes from bots, both for the good and for the bad, but AI is driving the latter. From DDOS attacks to scraping, there is a new barrage of threats that businesses must deal with.
According to cybersecurity entrepreneur Nikita Rosenberg, the impact of SMB is even more severe. “The main difference is that large companies can usually survive with it. Most of these threats can simply kill small businesses.”
This led him to launch Blackwall, an Estonia-based startup previously known as Botguard.
This focus also influenced the product roadmap. Recently, e-commerce websites have launched an anti-advertising product that prevents ads from being consumed by bots.
The pace at which startups are launching new applications and plans to continue doing so is one factor that resonated with Dawn Capital, a B2B-focused VC company supporting Blackwall's 45 million euro Series B round (approximately $49.2 million).
This funding will help you develop more new products beyond the flagship GateKeeper, a reverse proxy that inspects traffic, analyzes it using AI, and filters malicious requests in real time. These threats include, for example, bots, as well as intruders.
That's also why Blackwall rebranded it to reflect its expanded scope. Denis Prochko, co-founder of Rozenberg, came up with the video game Cyberpunk 2077, a new name in which a complex firewall called Blackwall protects the net from Rogue Ais.
Video game lore aside, Blackwall's reality is a low profile. To adapt to SMB, you need to provide both easy to use and automated. This means that it is often invisible to the end user. That's also because the Blackwall wasn't sold directly to SMB and instead chose what Rozenberg calls the “channel model.”
The strategy consists of partnering with intermediaries such as service providers, managed service providers and e-commerce platforms looking to improve margins. Providing a blackwall to customers is a differentiator and a way to reduce costs generated from malicious traffic.
That's also why Blackwall goes for mid-market players who can't spend millions on in-house product development like their biggest competitors like GoDaddy and need external support to handle this issue. Conversely, startups have found this sales strategy particularly fruitful.
Partnering with over 100 of these players has helped Blackwall scale quickly since its launch in 2019. There are 65 teams and claim that the service is currently deployed to over 2.3 million websites and applications.
The new funds will now help double its personnel and double its expansion into the US and APAC markets. From Dawn Capital support and VC company MMC Ventures, who joined the round after leading the startup's 12 million euro series a year ago (approximately $13.1 million at today's exchange rate).