Deal focus: CounterTack locks up funding for security

Following the recent WannaCry attack, computer security experts worldwide sighed with relief. While hundreds of thousands of hard drives had been held hostage by an unknown group’s ransomware, the hackers had left a critical weakness that allowed a researcher to dramatically slow the spread of the infection as defensive measures were put in place.

However, these experts know that a more sophisticated programmer could have done far worse damage across the corporate, government and consumer spheres. The incident highlighted how vulnerable the world’s information economy is to threats and how difficult it has become for managed security service providers (MSSP) to detect and respond to attacks in a timely way.

“Number one, they don’t have a solid way to definitively determine what it is; number two, they can’t do it in real time,” says Tom Bain, vice president of global marketing for US and Singapore-based threat detection software developer CounterTack. “Even with stuff that’s been seen in a lot of systems and available in open-source intelligence feeds, or via paid-for intelligence sources, they’re still seeing problems.”

CounterTack aims to help plug these security holes with its software by cutting the detection and response time for major threats. With a $20 million Series D round led by SingTel Innov8, the venture arm of Singapore telecom giant SingTel, the company is poised to make its technology offering a central part of the world’s computing infrastructure.

The latest funding round embodies CounterTack’s strategy to deepen existing relationships while also attracting newcomers. The company already has a substantial partnership with SingTel, which integrates CounterTack’s threat detection service into its technology across the region, and US-based SAP National Security Services, the co-leader of the round, aims to adopt the company’s products the same way.

“Anybody can resell technology, but when you’re starting to integrate technology into the fabric of what you’re offering as an MSSP to customers, that’s really what we’re looking for,” says Bain.

CounterTack expects Asia to continue to be a significant source of growth in coming years. While IT managers in the region have lagged behind other markets in the implementation of security measures in the past, Bain says the level of sophistication, even in emerging markets, is quickly catching up to that of the West, with both corporate and government customers contributing to the company’s growth. As this maturation continues CounterTack aims to improve its own offering in turn to match the sophistication of its users.

“We want to become the go-to provider so that under one piece of software, we can deliver more capability than just end-point detection response. We want to have more capability around incident response and forensics,” Bain says. “With CounterTack, teams can get more value out of what they’re doing on employee security.”

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• North America
• Technology
• Expansion
• Singapore
• Growth capital
• Venture
• SingTel Innov8