Bharosa Bags Bucks, Phoils Phishers

Bharosa Inc., a startup claiming its security software for service providers and enterprises has already made it profitable, just clinched $1 million in funding.

Jon Fisher, Bharosas CEO, told NDCF that the Series A round was led by some of the company’s customers, including the University of California, San Francisco and application service provider (ASP) Citadon Inc.

Founded in 2003, Bharosa’s story is all about helping service providers and other enterprises secure customer data. Businesses are coming under increasing pressure from attacks such as phishing and trojan horses, which can record the keystrokes used to enter passwords on computers. This data can then be used for fraudulent purposes (see Report: Employees Fall for Phish and Beware of the Trojans!).

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor believes that it has the answer to this problem in the shape of its v.Crypt software. Bharosa’s v.Crypt Authenticator uses a set of keyboard-style images that appear on the screen of end-user devices such as PCs and laptops. Users deploy a mouse instead of a keyboard to enter their passwords.

Foster told NDCF that Authenticator offers an additional layer of security by using a software agent to encrypt data sent from the end-user device. Another agent, which typically sits behind the firewall in a customer’s data center, then uses a set of algorithms to decrypt the data.