VENICE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Signal Sciences today unveiled the industry’s first next generation web application firewall (WAF) designed to address the security challenges in today’s era of agile development. The founding team comes from Etsy, where they were forced to create a new approach to security in the face of changes to the broader technology landscape that traditional security products weren’t keeping up with. Signal Sciences was created with the mission of elevating security into a strategic tool that is relevant to all teams involved in creating product and shipping code, allowing engineers and DevOps to work both fast and securely.
As it launches publicly, Signal Sciences is already working with a range of customers, including Under Armour, Yelp/Eat 24, Chartbeat, Taser, Shutterstock, Duo Security and more. Along with the public launch of the company, Signal Sciences is disclosing a 2015 Series A funding round of $9.7 million, led by Index Ventures, and a board of advisors including: Alex Stamos, CSO of Facebook; Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy; Brad Arkin, CSO of Adobe; Dan Kaminsky, Chief Scientist of White Ops; Gene Kim, Founder of TripWire; and Ryan McGeehan, founding advisor at HackerOne.
In the age of cloud deployment and agile development, security teams are struggling to protect the applications being created and modified at a relentlessly quickening pace. A defensive strategy built on the assumption that it’s possible to review and fix code before it goes live is dying. Security teams need to monitor the state of their applications in real time. Signal Sciences has combined an innovative focus on visibility into the behavior of attackers with a new approach to application protection to enable security teams to both respond to attacks as they happen and also prioritize their limited proactive time with a more accurate calculation of risk.
“Agile development has changed the way enterprises release code, but until now, security technology has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Shocking as it sounds, the majority of businesses today don’t even know they have been hacked until they’re informed by someone else well after the fact,” said Andrew Peterson, CEO of Signal Sciences. “By being forced to take a radically new approach to web application security, we learned that you have to bridge the gap between security teams, developers and any other departments that need to be aware of a company’s security issues to enable teams to confidently move at the speed they need to succeed.”
"Signal Sciences has given us confidence in our application security posture especially for current and future acquisitions. Their architecture and install process make it seamless to start receiving real-time attack telemetry so that we can prioritize our defensive efforts based on actual attacks,” said Vivek Raman, Engineering Manager at Yelp/Eat 24.
“In a short time, Signal Sciences has assembled a who’s who of security experts to work with the team. It’s clear that the industry recognizes the need for a solution like the one they’ve built,” said Shardul Shah, Partner at Index Ventures and Board Member at Signal Sciences. "Security is no longer the sole responsibility of security professionals. Everyone involved in the development and deployment of secure applications needs visibility into and shared responsibility of the process, and Signal Sciences addresses that growing need."
About Signal Sciences
Signal Sciences’ industry-first Next Generation Web Application Firewall was built in response to our frustrations of trying to use legacy WAFs while enabling business initiatives like DevOps and cloud adoption. The Signal Sciences NGWAF works seamlessly across cloud, physical and containerized infrastructure, providing actionable security prioritization based on where your applications are targeted, and blocking attacks without breaking production traffic. Signal Sciences’ clients include Under Armour, Etsy, Yelp/Eat 24, Shutterstock, Prezi and more. The company is headquartered in Venice, CA.
