Today, bot detection and mitigation provider Netacea announced that it had raised $12 million in series A funding. 

The organization’s agentless solution is designed to detect and mitigate bot attacks that target mobile, website, and API applications with real-time threat intelligence and machine learning. Detectable threats include everything from automated scrapers, scalpers, and carding attempts to credential stuffing attacks. 

In short, Netacea provides a solution that enterprises and technical decision makers can use to protect websites from automated attacks, which have become increasingly common. 

Moving the app security solutions market away from rule-based detection 

Netacea is an upcoming provider in the application security solutions market, which Forester anticipates will grow from $4.7 billion in 2019 to $12.9 billion by 2025, as bot management solutions gradually overtake traditional web application firewall (WAF) solutions.

One of Netacea’s main competitors is DataDome, which provides real-time bot protection for ecommerce sites against threats like automated scraping and vulnerability scanning, and raised $35 million last year in a series B funding round to invest in R&D.  

Another is PerimeterX Bot Defender, a behavior-based bot management solution designed to protect web and mobile apps from bot attacks, which last year raised $57 million in growth capital funding to expand geographically. 

While these solutions have helped to secure the websites of many organizations, they haven’t fully addressed the challenges of defending against automated bot attacks. 

“A simplistic rules-based approach to bot management won’t cut it anymore. Security suites need to be supported by dedicated bot management solutions that can respond to new threats and take advantage of new threat intelligence. Netacea’s agent-less approach is the right one,” explained investor Alex Eckelbery, NED of Malwarebytes.

The funding round for Netacea included investors such as Mercia Asset Management and individuals from Crowdstrike, Malwarebytes, and KnowBe4. The funding will enable the organization to expand its presence across the U.K. and the U.S., while growing its technical team in development, data science, data analysis, and threat research.

“We’re delighted to close this new round of funding. We have already won some big U.S. customers, such as Shutterstock, and look forward to continuing our push into the U.S. market,” said CEO and cofounder Jeremy Gidlow.