Estonia's WebARX raises a six-digit investment round for its web security platform

WebARX, an Estonian-founded web security startup has announced their second investment round. The six-figure investment was led by Spanish cybersecurity company Open Data Security and Estonia's LIFT99. WebARX protects websites and customer data through a web security platform that provides firewall capabilities, software management, and continuous security monitoring and reporting. Currently, WebARX protects over 100,000 websites and is used by over 3,000 web developers and digital agencies to improve and monitor security on their sites.

CEO and Co-Founder Oliver Sild describes the company's unique value:

"Today, most websites and web applications are built with different frameworks and components that make the development process faster and easier. In many cases, third-party components can be flawed and vulnerable to different attacks, which in some cases are not detected as traditional vulnerabilities and can often bypass generic web application firewalls. WebARX is focusing on component security and on the issues which come with modern web application development. We help developers and agencies keep a good overview of their websites' security statuses and proactively protect against malicious traffic."

WebARX reporting leads to vulnerability patch

In February, WebARX gained attention for finding a critical WordPress plugin flaw. Luka Šikić, one of WebARX's developers and researchers, was responsible for identifying the vulnerability, which allowed attackers to take over entire websites through the plugin, ‘Simple Social Buttons’. The plugin vulnerability put more than 40,000 WordPress sites at risk and was patched shortly after Šikić reported it.

WebARX was founded in July 2018 and now their fully distributed team serves customers in 83 countries. According to Gareth Sharp, CEO of Open Data Security, “Having first met with WebARX at the Web Summit 2018 event, we felt their product was very innovative and was a perfect addition to our portfolio. After numerous meetings with the founder Oliver Sild and the rest of the team, we knew that these were the right people to drive this company forward and didn't hesitate to jump on board to offer our financial assistance. The directors of Open Data Security look forward to working with the team of WebARX to continue their fantastic growth.”

This round of investment will be put towards marketing and new product development. The company is currently building a new offering that aims to further improve their research and security capabilities.