ProtectWise, a security startup, has introduced its “Cloud Network DVR,” a product that can record and store everything on the network that security professionals can play back to uncover suspicious activity.
CEO and co-founder Scott Chasin described the product as “a virtual camera in the cloud that records everything on the network and allows security professionals to see threats in real time and goes back in time — days, weeks, months and even years of historical data — automatically to discover previously unknown threats.”
Two Years of Development
Today’s announcement marks ProtectWise’s transition from “stealth mode,” a move augmented by receipt of more than $ 17 million in financing from Crosslink Capital, Trinity Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, and Arsenal Venture Partners. The financing will be used to scale business operations and drive continued product development and innovation, according to the company.
“The network security industry is in need of fundamental re-invention,” said Larry Orr, general partner, Trinity Ventures, one of the first investors. “ProtectWise’s world class team and novel approach to network security uniquely position it to lead the charge into the future of infrastructure security and we’re excited to be part of it.”
The ProtectWise system consists of three separate components: a so-called “virtual camera” to collect and organize network traffic from multiple sources; a “time machine” to enable network administrators to review activity and look for potential vulnerabilities; and a data visualizer.
The data visualizer “gives security professionals the tools they need to see the state of network security at-a-glance, quickly pivot into deep dive forensics and ultimately, respond faster and more accurately to security incidents,” according to Chasin.
Longer Data Retention for Playback
One of the primary issues that ProtectWise is hoping to address is the often limited time data is available to be analyzed so security pros can detect network attacks.
“At best, most existing network recording solutions provide only a two-week retention period. And to achieve this limited window requires a significant investment in hardware,” Chasin said. “ProtectWise is always recording everything that happens on a network and centralizing the information in our cloud platform, where it is continuously analyzed.”
Chasin said that the ProtectWise cloud approach will offer three specific benefits to customers: it will add “the Z-axis of time to threat detection”; it will enable “correlated community-scaled threat detection”; and it introduces the concept of “network security as a utility.”
The company is pitching its ability to collect and analyze “full-fidelity network traffic” for “days, weeks, months and even years.” Investors appear to agree that there is a substantial potential market for outsourced network traffic storage and analysis.
Early adopters of the ProtectWise Cloud Network DVR include more than a dozen companies in technology, financial services, healthcare, and media and entertainment, including Universal Music Group.
