Leading European Security Start-up Launches U.S. Operations
Metaforic’s High Profile Executive Team to Deliver Anti-Tamper Software Security Solution to U.S. Market
SAN JOSE, Calif. — October 28, 2008 —
Software anti-tamper start-up, Metaforic, today announced the launch of its U.S. operations and the opening of an office in San Jose, California. Metaforic, which is co-founded by a successful technology and business team led by CEO Andrew McLennan, was recently honored as a semi-finalist in the Global Security Challenge (GSC), an international business competition focusing on and identifying the world’s most promising security start-ups.
The company also recently announced $2 million in funding from software specialist venture capitalists Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund. The funding will be used to expand the company’s worldwide operations including sales and marketing in the U.S.
Co-founders CEO Andrew McLennan, COO Linda MacKellar and CTO Neil Stewart all have extensive executive level experience with successful technology start-ups founded to create and market innovative technology solutions to address difficult industry problems. With a background in the video game software industry, Metaforic’s founders aim to drastically increase application protection to fight software piracy and restore lost revenue opportunities.
Metaforic’s first commercially available product, MetaFortress, is a software anti-tamper solution that protects applications from piracy and illegal use by utilizing a network of thousands of cross-referenced checks, which can take years of painstaking work to remove. MetaFortress is
the result of a five-year research project funded by the Scottish government to combat the staggering problem of software piracy that contributes to an estimated $40 billion in lost software revenue worldwide. MetaFotress’ approach extends the time it takes for hackers to penetrate an application from minutes to months or even years. Metaforic aims to create the highest level of application protection and make it usable for all software and environments.
“We’ve received very positive and constructive feedback from the European market for our groundbreaking product and are now at the stage where we are ready to bring our product’s unique capabilities to the ever-important U.S. market,” said Andrew McLennan, CEO of Metaforic. “In time, the Metaforic name will come to define the most effective means of preventing against even the most sophisticated software attacks.”
Metaforic Receives Funding From Pentech Ventures To Expand Worldwide Operations
SAN JOSE, Calif. — October 1, 2008 —
Metaforic, a leading provider of anti‐tamper solutions, today announced the closure of a $2 million funding round from software specialist venture capitalists Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Co‐Investment Fund. The funding will be used to enhance Metaforic’s European presence and to expand the company’s worldwide operations including sales and marketing in the United States.
Metaforic provides real world solutions to the increasing threat of software hacking, loss of software integrity, and data theft. In response to the growing commercial demand for software protection and integrity, this injection of capital will allow Metaforic to bring its groundbreaking technology – MetaFortress – to market. The funding comes on the heels of Metaforic being named as one of the security industry’s rising stars. Last month, Metaforic was selected as a semi‐finalist in the Global Security Challenge (GSC). The GSC is a worldwide organization which runs an international business competition to find and select the most promising security startups.
“The technology and product that the team at Metaforic have built and their initial go‐to‐market has been very impressive,” said Sandy McKinnon, partner with Pentech Ventures. “We believe that the MetaFortress approach is the most technically advanced method of software protection currently available, but more than that it is in addressing the ease of use and minimizing the overhead in any
application performance that positions Metaforic as a potentially world‐leading company in this space. MetaFortress is a product that could take military‐grade security to mass market software.
“Also Metaforic have solutions that are unique for cloud computing, which could make them very strategic to the uptake of that technology. We are very excited to be working with the team on this first phase of building Metaforic,” added McKinnon.
With enterprise software hacking at its highest level of penetration to date, the need for robust and effective security solutions is a major concern. MetaFortress uses advanced techniques to provide pervasive protection to software in a manner that makes the effort involved in hacking extremely tedious and lengthy to even the most sophisticated pirates. With MetaFortress, protection times that average in the minutes are transformed into protection times lasting months or even years.
“Current products on the market offer limited protection, huge performance penalties and complicated, lengthy deployment procedures,” said Andrew McLennan, CEO of Metaforic. “MetaFortress makes no such compromises. MetaFortress offers the highest level of software protection on the market, with near zero performance impact, yet it only takes about an hour to deploy. With our recent investment from Pentech and the Scottish Co‐Investment Fund, we are well positioned to expand our organization and introduce MetaFortress to the worldwide market.”
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