NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HUMAN Security, Inc. (formerly White Ops)—the global leader in collective protection against sophisticated bot attacks and fraud—today announced a $100 million growth funding round led by WestCap with additional investment from NightDragon and other current investors to support the company in its next phase of growth.
Today, HUMAN protects the world’s largest enterprises and internet platforms from sophisticated bot attacks and fraud across the domains of application security, digital advertising, and performance marketing. In 2021, the company experienced accelerated adoption of its specialized bot mitigation platform on a global basis and saw its revenue growth rate double year over year.
“With this growth investment from WestCap, NightDragon and additional investors, we will expand our leadership position to build a more secure and more human internet,” said Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO of HUMAN. “HUMAN plays to win through collective protection by verifying the humanity of 15 trillion interactions per week, enabling us to defeat attackers–changing the odds to the side of the good.”
77% of all cyberattacks are bot-based. Cybercriminals with millions of sophisticated bots at their disposal can send billions of fake requests to create fake accounts, take over accounts and commit credit card fraud, manipulate popularity and consensus, contaminate user data, defraud digital advertising and marketing campaigns, and snipe or hoard online goods and services.
In a recent holiday shopping survey with responses from more than 1,000 consumers, 53% of respondents said bots pose a threat to their holiday shopping plans, and 51% said they would shop with a different retailer if bots interfered with their customer experience. In an enterprise security survey conducted by the research and analyst group ESG, 90% of security leaders identified bot management as a top five priority due to the severity and the sophistication of attacks, and 65% believe that partnering with a bot specialist is the only way to protect themselves.
"HUMAN is addressing one of the most fundamental problems on the internet today: keeping digital experiences human,” said Kevin Marcus, Partner at WestCap.“We believe they’re uniquely positioned to disrupt the economics of cybercrime and prevent billions in losses.”
HUMAN’s modern defense strategy enables internet-class scale and observability, superior detection techniques, and hacker intelligence and takedowns. Examples include taking down PARETO—the most sophisticated CTV botnet ever found—in cooperation with Roku and Google; disrupting 3ve bringing together the FBI, Google, Facebook and many others in the industry; and the takedown of Methbot, which recently culminated in the self-proclaimed ‘King of Fraud’ responsible for the operation being sentenced to 10 years in prison.
"Through our experience in engaging with hundreds of enterprises and their cybersecurity teams, we know that automated attacks on applications and websites creating fraud and abuse is a critical point of risk to every enterprise," said Dave DeWalt, Founder and Managing Director at NightDragon and Vice Chairman of the Board of HUMAN. "Since we engaged with HUMAN over the past year, they have proven to us and the industry that they are best positioned to stop these threats by stopping attacks at the source.”
HUMAN’ solves enterprise-wide pain points through its product offerings:
- MediaGuard for Ad Security - Protects digital media and advertising from fraud and abuse within desktop, mobile, and CTV environments to ensure trusted inventory and human-only impressions for more effective advertising.
- BotGuard for Applications - Protects sites and applications from digital fraud and abuse including account takeover attacks, new account fraud, fraudulent transactions and sensitive content scraping, preventing costly fraud losses while preserving user privacy and frictionless digital experiences.
- BotGuard for Growth Marketing - Protects digital marketing investments from fraud and abuse including paid media, lead generation, and retargeting, preventing fraudulent traffic from entering marketing platforms to ensure efficiency and boost ROI.
“HUMAN’s highly intelligent technology and scaled signal collection help its clients protect against a wide range of sophisticated fraud types,” said Anthony Arnold, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. “Following this growth investment by WestCap in HUMAN, we look forward to working with them and our partners at ClearSky and NightDragon to accelerate HUMAN’s expansion into new markets.”
To learn more about HUMAN’s perspective on how this investment further advances their mission, read this blog post from co-founder and CEO Tamer Hassan.
About HUMAN
HUMAN is a cybersecurity company that protects enterprises and internet platforms from sophisticated bot attacks and fraud to keep digital experiences human. Our modern defense strategy enables internet-class scale and observability, superior detection techniques and hacker intelligence & takedowns empowering us to defeat your attackers, improving the digital experience for real humans. Today we verify the humanity of more than 15 trillion interactions per week for some of the largest companies and internet platforms. Protect your digital business with HUMAN. To Know Who’s Real, visit www.humansecurity.com.
About WestCap
WestCap is a strategic investor and operator in growth equity that partners with visionary leaders to build generational companies. WestCap’s team is comprised of seasoned entrepreneurs and company builders who work side-by-side with founders to help companies scale. With over $8 billion of assets under management and committed capital, WestCap has made notable investments like Airbnb, StubHub, iPreo, Skillz, Addepar, Hopper, iCapital, GoodLeap, Cerebral, Bolt, Celsius, and NYDIG. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco and London. For more information, visit www.WestCap.com.
About NightDragon
NightDragon is an investment and advisory firm focused on growth and late-stage investments within the cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy industries. Its platform and vast industry network provide unparalleled threat insights, deal flow, market leverage and operating expertise to drive portfolio company growth and increase shareholder value. The NightDragon team has more than 25 years of operational and market expertise and was founded by Dave DeWalt and Ken Gonzalez, who served as senior executives leading technology companies such as Documentum, EMC, Siebel Systems (Oracle), McAfee, Mandiant, Avast and FireEye.
About Goldman Sachs Asset Management Private Equity
Bringing together traditional and alternative investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management provides clients around the world with a dedicated partnership and focus on long-term performance. As the primary investing area within Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), we deliver investment and advisory services for the world’s leading institutions, financial advisors and individuals, drawing from our deeply connected global network and tailored expert insights, across every region and market—overseeing more than $2 trillion in assets under supervision worldwide as of September 30, 2021. Driven by a passion for our clients’ performance, we seek to build long-term relationships based on conviction, sustainable outcomes, and shared success over time. Goldman Sachs Asset Management invests in the full spectrum of alternatives, including private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure.
