French open-source cybersecurity platform startup CrowdSec announced today it has raised €14 million ($13.7 million) in new funding to expand its operations in the U.S. and increase its user network tenfold.

Supernova Invest led the Series A round, with Breega also participating. Including the new funding, the company has raised €19.5 million ($19.1 million) to date, according to Crunchbase.

Founded in 2019, CrowdSec offers an open-source security engine that analyzes the behavior of internet protocol addresses. The company’s platform focuses on real-time threat detection, security automation, data breach prevention, reputation and behavior analysis to respond to attacks and share signals across the community.

Collaboration is key to CrowdSec’s offering, with data gathered by the platform from Sysadmins, DevOps and SecOps being shared with others to outnumber cybercriminals and to “burn all their previous masks.” Described as the world’s first collaborative intrusion prevention system, access is granted through an open-source, MIT-licensed solution with a database of malicious IP addresses for all community members to block, generating a real-time, crowdsourced threat intelligence system that can counter cyberattacks worldwide.

CrowdSec’s platform is said to detect and deter most types of attack regardless of the increasingly sophisticated nature of cybercrime, such as scalping to botting, distributed denial of service, ransomware, voice-over-internet-protocol abuse, troll farms, credential brute force, scans and more. It does so while creating a real-time database of cybercriminally controlled IP addresses.

The company claims that its users experience an instant reduction of more than 90% in the number of incoming cyberattacks. In the event that cybercriminals change the IP addresses they use to carry out attacks, CrowdSec’s network will clear out the previous one and share the new one with users within minutes.

“At the heart of CrowdSec is a simple but powerful idea: community action,” CrowdSec Chief Executive Officer Philippe Humeau said in a statement. “Forty years of cybersecurity has proven isolated cybersecurity defenses to be largely ineffective, regardless of the vast resources invested by companies, institutions and governments. CrowdSec’s unique strength lies in numbers and in applying a concerted, global approach to a global problem. Cybercriminals are outnumbered tens of thousands to one by legitimate Internet users, all of whom can now join forces to protect themselves and each other.”

CrowdSec’s software has been installed more than 100,000 times by users, including governments, major e-commerce companies, and media and financial institutions. The new funding will be used to increase the company’s headcount from 20 to 45, develop its technical stack, expand its U.S. operations and grow its worldwide network.

Image: CrowdSec