With the increase in technological advancements, numerous enterprise-level companies experience expensive cybersecurity breaches. The threat to online security is caused due to the inefficiency in protecting valuable and sensitive information from hackers. As per reports, pirate websites secured nearly 190 billion visits last year. This has affected several industries including software, publishing, music, TV and movies. While there is a surge in cybersecurity threats, there are companies that ensure to provide online security by combating online piracy.
Spanish startup Smart Protection is one such firm, which is dedicated to combat online piracy and counterfeiting. This company was founded in 2015 by Javier Capilla, Manuel Moregal and Javier Perea in Madrid to resolve the issues of online piracy for companies that own intellectual and industrial property rights and distribute products and content online.
Raises €5.2M funding
Smart Protection just announced that it raised €5.2 million Series A funding in a round led by pan-European VC Nauta Capital. The company’s existing investors including Wayra, Telefonica’s open innovation hub, JME Ventures, Bankinter and Big Sur Ventures also took part in the financing round.
Previously, the cybersecurity firm raised nearly €1.83 million. With the latest round of funding, the company plans to grow its core product and tap into new markets.
What Smart Protection does?
Madrid-based Smart Protection’s platform detects and eliminates brand as well as product infringements by monitoring the web to identify and capture the assets of a brand using data technologies. It analyses the collected information combining its SaaS technology platform with cybersecurity experts to deliver 95% efficiency in eliminating infringements.
Its automated processes along with agreements with Google and major social networks takes down links that infringe piracy or counterfeiting in just a few hours. It has delisted over 11 million hyperlinks since it was founded on Google.
What Smart Protection and its legal partners – Padima, PONS IP, Clarke & Modet, Isern and Lerroux and technology partners such as Telefónica Business Solutions want is to build a safer internet that protects companies’ assets safe online.
Real-time monitoring
Smart Protection uses a modular SaaS platform, which adapts to the requirements of each client. It might be monitoring of search engines, peer-to-peer torrent websites, social networks, marketplaces or other content-hosting hubs. As the internet is a global entity, copyright and trademark registrations don’t apply globally or might differ from one country to another. Each client will have various requirements for various channels to analyse the websites, social networks, marketplaces and more. It is for this reason that Smart Protection should carefully configure the platform for clients.
Once the configuration is over, each client will get access to the dashboard that lets them view real-time infractions from any device. They can view detections and eliminations and also potential violations that are being analysed from the dashboard.
If the platform analyses a URL that is considered to be hosting infringed content, it has to make sure fake positives are eliminated. In case of doubts, Smart Protection works with analyses to pore the identified websites manually before concluding that the URL has infringed content. This helps improve the company’s machine learning systems.
Wide clientele
The Spanish cybersecurity startup has customers in 18 countries across US, Europe, and LATAM. It counts some of the biggest TV and media publishers including Warner Bros Entertainment, Sony Pictures, NBCUniversal, and Movistar+ in the world as its customers. Besides these, the company also protects soccer sports broadcasts such as Argentine Super League and other major brands such as McAfee from online piracy and counterfeiting.
Javier Perea, added, “This partnership with Nauta will boost the development of our Artificial Intelligence technology, facilitate international expansion and also allow us to recruit the best talent in order to build an increasingly secure internet.”
Commenting on the investment, Jordi Vinas, Nauta Capital’s General Partner said, “Smart Protection has developed a world-class technical platform able to take down illegal content from the internet efficiently—often surpassing competitors that have raised significant amounts of money. From our first interaction with the team, we were impressed with their track-record and stellar team, and we look forward to working together on the mission to make Smart Protection the go-to Anti-Piracy platform of the internet.”
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