What Our B-Round Means for the Growth of Social Media Security

Here at ZeroFox, we are excited to close a $27 million Series B funding round. Highland Capital led the round with the support of NEA, Genacast, Core Capital and Silicon Valley Bank. Needless to say, we’re looking forward to the future of ZeroFox and the growth of social media security.

But the investment also tells a much bigger and more important story. The paradigm of cyber security is responding to major changes in how humans interact in the digital world. IT security always follows new IT systems: it’s high time social networking is viewed with an information security lens. The growth of social media represents the largest unsecured network in the world, and organizations are beginning to grapple with the difficult task of securing social interactions.

Attacks via social media are becoming ubiquitous -- attackers have known for years that social media is the easiest way to target and engage a potential victim. Nowhere are people more trusting, more willing to click a link and more readily exploitable than on social networks.

There has been a lot of talk on the growth of social media and its use in compromising corporate networks. Cisco’s 2015 Midyear Report claims Facebook scams are the #1 method to breach the corporate network, far more common than traditional email phishing. McAfee reported that employees experience cyber crime on social media more than any other business platform, including email. According to Norton, 40% of people have fallen victim to social media cyber crime and nearly 4 in 10 accept unknown, unsolicited friend requests. Barracuda’s research supports this as well: 92% of social media users report receiving spam, 54% have received phishing links and 23% have received malware. Finally, TrendMicro’s research shows that 5.8% of tweets are malicious; roughly 29,000,000 malicious tweets per day. The list could go on. It's clear that the growth of social media demands new approaches to digital security.

“It has become a truism in the Information Age that every new digital platform is quickly followed by corresponding digital security,” said Corey Mulloy, partner at Highland Capital and new ZeroFox board member. “Social media is the biggest change in the digital landscape over the past decade - organizations are increasingly coming to terms with the risk exposure associated with social networking.”

The ZeroFox B-round is increased validation that we are solving an important problem for our customers. This new round of funding will help ZeroFox continue providing our customers with the most comprehensive social media security available. We’re excited to expand our efforts and further empower organizations to harness social data to detect attacks, improve information security posture, mitigate fraud and stay a step ahead of the adversaries.

With this investment, ZeroFox will focus on accelerating scale by adding significant investment into engineering, global sales & marketing efforts and implementing an M&A strategy. Additionally, ZeroFox will be applying increased emphasis around IP protection & defense.

Cheers to a happy holiday season, and a secure 2016!