Ironscales Ltd., a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity provider, this morning announced that it has raised a $6.5 million funding round led by K1 Capital Management to tackle one of the biggest online threats facing enterprises today.

The startup develops tools for fending off phishing attacks, which target an organization’s employees with legitimate-looking emails designed to obtain sensitive data or spread malware. Such messages have been at the center of many high-profile security incidents over recent years. Among others, the hackers responsible for the record-breaking breach at Yahoo Inc. are believed to have used phishing tactics to gain system access.

Ironscales offers to mitigate the threat posed to enterprises by automating the detection of malicious messages. The startup says that its IronSights service can spot spoofed sender addresses impersonating a business contact, as well as identify when a legitimate email account may have been hijacked by hackers. The tool approaches the latter task by looking at anomalies in the volume of messages that a worker sends, the links they include and other key factors.

Suspicious emails are flagged via a companion plugin that companies can integrate into workers’ inboxes to prevent them from falling victim to attackers. Moreover, Ironscales offers a service called IronTraps that lets users take on a more proactive role and report phishing attempts via a toolbar button.

Flagging an email triggers two actions. First, IronTraps sends information about the phishing attempt to a company’s cybersecurity team for analysis. Second, it automatically takes remediative steps according to the severity of a threat. The service may go as far as deleting all instances of the message throughout an organization if the situation calls for it.

Ironscales also offers software for training employees to avoid any phishing emails that may slip through the cracks and a platform called Federation, which lets companies share data about new threats with one another. The firm competes with several providers that offer similar products, including PhishMe Inc., a fellow startup backed by $58 million in funding.

Image: Ironscales