NBIF Start-up Stops Internet Fraud

Every year, Malware affects more than 95% of the world’s Global 5000 enterprises costing the global economy approximately $1 trillion. Today, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) and Technology Venture Corporation announced venture capital investments of $250,000 each in Ara Labs Security Solutions. The company’s software-as-a-service technology detects, reports and mediates malware and botnet activity across the Internet in real-time. The majority of viruses, malware and botnets are designed for criminal activities, for example, the theft of private information, money and intellectual property.

What is unique about Ara Labs’ solution is its ability to detect infections without internal access to an organization’s network. Instead, Ara Labs scans the Internet to detect and pinpoint both the IP address and geographical location of a botnet or malware infected computer with immediate effect.

“When Ara Labs first pitched their business to us back in August 2013, we could see the desirability of their system immediately, especially considering the enormous amount of Internet fraud perpetrated every year, and how it hits the bottom line of some of the world’s largest corporations,” says NBIF chair Robert Hatheway, “since then, we’ve been working with the company to raise the capital it needs to get its product to market and put to use immediately.”

Ara Labs is working with a number of Fortune 500 companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) already, and in January 2014 signed a deal with the Government of New Brunswick to make it the first botnet and malware secure jurisdiction in Canada.

“ISPs have a responsibility to inform their subscribers when their IP addresses are infected and controlled by malware,” says Ara Labs CEO and Dean of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick Dr. Ali Ghorbani, “our solution sits objectively and remotely separate from the customer network to monitor suspicious network activity across the internet in a way that provides previously undetected threat intelligence.”

Ara Labs Security Solutions was founded by Hadi Shiravi (CTO), Ehsan Mokhtari  (VP of Engineering) and Ali Shiravi, all PhD candidates in Computer Science at UNB, specializing in network security. Dr. Ali Ghorbani, is also a founding member.