Fyde, a cybersecurity company focused protecting mobile devices, has emerged from stealth with $3m in seed-stage funding.
The Palo Alto, California-based company raised the capital from Draper Nexus and Vertex Ventures. Having launched out of stealth, Fyde said it is signing partners in the banking and payments industries to deliver Fyde as part of their customer security portfolio. However, the company didn’t reveal any further details in its announcement.
With the seed-stage funding onboard, Fyde has announced the official launch of its free Apple iOS app. The app intercepts phishing, smishing, vishing or online account takeover attacks on mobile devices in real-time, neutralising threats.
According to a report by Anti-Phishing Working Group’s there were 291,096 unique phishing attacks reported worldwide in the first half of 2017. These attacks occurred on 108,680 unique domains targeting 640 brands and reaching 12.4 million potential victims.
Fyde claims to combat this issue by providing consumers with automatic blocking, instant alerts or actionable advice when a questionable site is identified.
“The human factor continues to be the largest unsolved problem within cybersecurity,” said Eren. “While some companies are focusing on legacy threats such as malware and ransomware, we’re zeroing in on the target that will dominate the next decade — wetware. To combat this, we’ve designed a mobile platform that will serve as the first line of defense against human-centric attacks, such as phishing.”
It uses machine learning techniques and human analysis to differentiate between authentic and risky links and messages, protecting consumers across all platforms, including iCloud, social media and online banking. Fyde claims to provide ‘simple onboarding and seamless operation’, without adding network latency or draining the device battery, while maintaining complete user and data privacy.
Fyde offers additional features such as banking session protection, text/voice protection and breach reports to cover the full spectrum of mobile risk factors. With session protection, Fyde scans the device and the network to ensure the session is safe and secure.
Text/voice protection filters fraudulent text messages and phone numbers to thwart unwanted and abusive senders. Breach reports offer an additional layer of protection by which users are alerted to a breach of a frequented app or website on their mobile device — even if the breach happened months ago.
“Cybersecurity for the human factor is overdue for a disruption,” said Rio Maeda, managing director, Draper Nexus. “Fyde is at the forefront of this revolution with its machine-driven, human-enriched approach that allows it to uniquely address phishing attacks on consumer mobile devices. They have successfully eliminated the reliance on consumer judgment to prevent phishing and account takeover attacks.”
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