Y Combinator Alum Castle Receives Funding To Prevent Account Takeovers

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Castle, the industry's first zero-configuration solution for account takeover (ATO) protection, announced today that the company has received $2 million in seed financing from First Round Capital with participation from F-Prime Capital, FundersClub and several notable angel investors. With this round of funding, Castle will expand into a complete account security suite for companies of all sizes.

Since graduating from Y Combinator six months ago, Castle has detected and mitigated more than 250,000 accounts across 15 million users from potential security threats. Hundreds of online applications are utilizing Castle, including e-commerce leader Rue La La.

"We take the security of our loyal members very seriously, and that means taking measures to proactively thwart potential threats," said Bill Carson, VP of Technology at Rue La La.

ATO fraud is on the rise, having almost tripled in 2015. Given the increased value of online user data, the sophistication and capabilities of attackers is outpacing the development of protection tools. With attackers using botnets to direct millions of simultaneous login attempts, companies are struggling to find the human resources to keep up. In addition, most ATO vendors don't have the ability to decipher the behavior between botnets and real humans. Consequently, the end-user (the customer) is burdened with complex password routines and multi-factor authentication when attempting to access accounts.

Castle's unique approach harnesses advanced machine learning to identify individual behavior and isolate potential threats with minimal false positives. Invisible to the end-user, Castle is deployed in minutes across a website and begins identifying account takeover activity immediately. For more information on how Castle works, please refer to this post.

"Given the scale and sophistication of cyberattacks today, it should come as no surprise that user generated passwords are failing to protect companies and their customers," said Phin Barnes, partner at First Round Capital. "Castle offers a much-needed out of the box solution, leveraging behavioral data to recognize us by our actions and quickly identify and challenge malicious actors. Their approach dramatically improves account safety while uniquely avoiding the additional burden that advanced security products typically place on users and risk management teams."

"More than half of online consumers still use the same passwords across all of their websites and accounts because it's convenient. Security needs to be convenient or people won't use it," said Johan Brissmyr, CEO and co-founder of Castle. "We're committed to building the most easy to use security product out there, and eventually eliminating the need for passwords altogether. This round of funding will help us reach the adoption needed to achieve that vision."

About Castle
Castle prevents account takeover by analyzing individual user behavior. Learn more by at www.castle.io or on Twitter @Castle_IO.

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http://www.castle.io