UPDATED 00:01 EDT / JULY 18 2017

INFRA

Accel leads $9.2M investment into network visibility startup Corelight

After quietly building up a customer base of several dozen organizations including six Fortune 100 companies, Corelight Inc. is ready to take on the broader network monitoring market.

The San Francisco-based startup will pursue its plans using $9.2 million in newly raised funding today courtesy of venture capital giant Accel, Osage University Partners and Riverbed Technology Inc. co-founder Steve McCanne. Corelight sells a server-based appliance that aims to help companies better harness network data in their cybersecurity operations. To that end, the system runs a special version of the memorably named Bro framework created by Corelight co-founder Vern Paxson, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

He released the first version of the software all the way back in 1995 while working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its name is a nod to George Orwell’s “Big Brother” intended to highlight the importance of upholding user privacy when analyzing network traffic. The reference’s message has retained its relevance to this day, while the framework is now one of the most battle-tested monitoring tools out there, with an installed base exceeding 10,000 organizations.

Corelight’s appliance harnesses the software to let security personnel aggregate data from every corner of their networks. The system is compatible with dozens of protocols and can tap into communications channels that often go slip under the radar, such as ports used by an application that was deployed without permission from the information technology department.

Aggregated logs are grouped into data streams to help users quickly connect the dots. The idea is reduce the risk of potentially valuable breach data going unnoticed, which is an all-too-common occurrence thanks to the sheer volume of network activity logs generated in a large company.

This arrangement is useful in other areas as well. According to Corelight, its appliance enables network protection staffers to look into alerts produced by other security tools to check their validity. If it turns out that a breach has indeed occurred, they can dig deeper to assess the scope of the incident. The system also provides connectors for moving data to external threat detection platforms in cases where manual analysis doesn’t cut it.

Corelight will use the capital from today’s fundraising to add yet more features to the appliance. Greg Bell, the startup’s chief executive, said his team will work to help companies “focus effort away from sensor management and toward higher-value activities like data analysis, threat hunting and incident response.”

Image: Pixabay

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