Security Fears Draw VC Bucks

What keeps security managers awake at night? That their systems will get hacked over the Web. That their databases will be compromised, exposing sensitive information to the world. That they will be audited and found in violation of federal regulations.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a vendor whose products address all three of those problems, Imperva, today won a record round of financing, generating $17 million in funding from four different venture companies.

Imperva, whose XML firewall product line is designed to stop insider abuse and criminal activity targeted at databases and sensitive e-commerce apps, is one of the few beneficiaries of recent trends toward Web-based database theft, as well as Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations designed to protect investor and customer information, observers say.

The SANS Institute recently listed online database attacks as one of its Top 20 most critical Internet security vulnerabilities, which reflects the recent trend towards data-targeted exploits, in which criminals steal user information, rather than funds. "Criminals are seeing that there's a lot more money to be made in stealing information than in stealing money," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute...

Read the rest of the story at Dark Reading.Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading