Lastline, Inc., a provider of active malware defense solutions for businesses, today announced it has raised $10 million in funding led by well-known venture capitalists, Redpoint Ventures and e.ventures. Lastline was founded in 2011 by a team of computer science professors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Northeastern University and world-renowned researchers in the malware analysis field to protect enterprise networks against advanced malware across all vectors including Web, download and Email. With the new funding, Lastline will focus on executing its sales strategy and further develop new solutions that use its innovative approach to identify threats that traditional anti-malware solutions cannot and provide organizations with a comprehensive system to protect their networks from advanced persistent threats (APTs), targeted attacks and zero-day threats in real time.

"We feel very fortunate to add Lastline to the Redpoint portfolio, and we believe that the company will be just as successful as two of our other industry leading security companies, Fortinet (FTNT) and Qihoo360 (QIHU)," said John Walecka, Partner, Redpoint Ventures. "Through leveraging an extremely advanced cloud based system emulation technology, Lastline has the best malware detection and remediation technology in the world."

"Their unique technology and approach combined with their experienced founding and technology team make Lastline well-positioned to effectively deal with today's rapidly evolving cyber threats," said Mathias Schilling, Partner, e.ventures. "We truly believe organizations worldwide will benefit from Lastline's solutions to protecting their networks and important digital assets."

In addition to the funding, Redpoint Ventures Partner, John Welecka, will be joining the Lastline board of directors. Mr. Welecka has helped many entrepreneurs in the enterprise and broadband infrastructure spaces achieve success including notable companies such as: Fortinet (FTNT), Network Equipment Technologies (NWK), Polycom (PLCM), and Avici Networks (AVCI).

"This round of funding and the addition of John to our board of directors will further propel our business to new levels as we continue to focus on our products in the channel and continue our research to develop even more solutions to help organizations protect their networks from rapidly evolving threats," said Jens Andreassen, CEO, Lastline.

Why the Time is Right for Lastline

Today, cybercriminals are rapidly evolving their malware techniques to attack networks. For example, malware authors are able to exploit the limited visibility of automated malware analysis systems (sandboxes) and ensure that targeted attacks and zero-day exploits remain successful. Recent malware attacks show evidence that evasive techniques are becoming more and more complex.

Currently, traditional malware security systems rely on the concept of detecting viruses that have previously been sampled, however this model is not effective when dealing with today's modern malware. With Lastline, organizations have advanced processor-level dynamic analysis, taint analysis and passive DNS analysis for the most accurate malware detection in the industry. Lastline's unparalleled correlation engine provides situational awareness and actionable threat intelligence by correlating, aggregating and prioritizing security events based on severity. With Lastline, enterprises are provided identification of threats and automated generation of detection models before they are exposed.

Lastline's flagship solution, Previct, provides enterprises with the most comprehensive insight of malware infestation in their network. This solution complements existing well-known protection and addresses advanced, targeted attacks that leverage zero-day exploits as well as evasive threats. Previct analyzes incoming traffic using high-resolution analysis and mines outbound traffic to detect malware-related events and correlates them into incidents.