California-based online security provider Zenedge will be ensuring Telus business customers are protected from malicious traffic following Telus Ventures’ participation in a $4 million Series B investment round.
Zenedge provides a perimeter defense around an organization’s IT infrastructure. Basically, instead of server requests going directly to a company’s servers, they first connect to one of Zenedge’s cloud servers which determines if it’s malicious or not, and only lets clean traffic through.
This also protects organizations from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can render websites inaccessible by flooding servers with junk requests so that legitimate requests can’t get answered.
The size of DDoS attacks has been dramatically increasing over the past couple years, making them increasingly difficult for corporate IT to mitigate on their own. In the past quarter, nearly three out of five attacks generate more than 1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) at their peak, and one in five reaches 10 Gbps, according to data from security provider Verisign.
The latest investment round brings Zenedge’s total funding to $7.5 million, and accelerates the company’s international expansion with the addition a DDoS mitigation centre in Amsterdam, and a second mitigation centre in Toronto before the year’s end. This complements its existing Canadian mitigation centres in Vancouver and Toronto.
Canadian mitigation centres ensure complete data sovereignty because data is transmitted, processed and stored on Canadian soil.
Data sovereignty is crucial for many businesses especially in highly regulated industries like law and health care that require certain data to remain in the country. And it could also keep it from being snooped on by foreign governments.
“Telus has always made it a priority to provide customers with exceptional security services, whether securing confidential data for major enterprises or delivering better healthcare services through safer technology,” stated Telus VP and CSO Kenneth Haertling, who will be joining Zenedge’s board of directors. “We’re looking forward to drawing on Zenedge’s expertise to enhance our end-to-end security offerings.”