Human Security Inc., a startup that helps enterprises mitigate malicious bot traffic, has closed a $100 million funding round led by WestCap.

Human announced the investment this morning. The startup said the venture capital firm NightDragon and a number of existing backers participated as well.

According to the company, an estimated 77% of cyberattacks are carried out by bots. Detecting bot traffic can be difficult because hackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to disguise malicious requests. To address the threat, Human provides three cybersecurity products that use machine learning to help companies detect bots more effectively. 

All three of the startup’s products are based on the same cloud-based detection engine. According to Human, the engine spots bots using more than 300 algorithms that analyze north of 2,500 signals to make decisions. The startup says its algorithms evaluate the network from which a request originated, the device that sent it, the software running on the device and other technical factors.

“Botnets have become one of the most prolific modern attack tools, used in over three quarters of security and fraud incidents. Our mantra is simple — stop the bots, stop the threats,” Human co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Tamer Hassan wrote today in a blog post announcing the startup’s funding round.

The first of Human’s three products, BotGuard for Applications, provides bot mitigation features that protect applications and websites. The startup says that the offering takes as little as a few minutes to set up. It can be integrated into a website by embedding a small snippet of JavaScript code and added to mobile apps via a software development kit.

Human’s two other products focus on detecting malicious bot activity that targets a company’s marketing campaigns. The two products are known as MediaGuard and BotGuard for Growth Marketing. They help companies detect fraud attempts, such as when bots interact with a brand’s online ads to give the impression that its advertising campaign is reaching more consumers than it does in practice.

Human said it will use the $100 million funding round to support growth initiatives. The startup plans to expand into more markets, as well as extend its product portfolio to address additional use cases for customers.

“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 of NightDragon. “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.”

Image: Human