| Type | Corporation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer security |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder(s) | Merrick Furst, Wenke Lee, David Dagon, Richard Lipton |
| Headquarters | Atlanta, GA, United States of America |
| Key people | Rahmani, Val; Ollmann, Gunter; Tom Savini |
| Products | Advanced malware detection |
| Website | http://www.damballa.com |
Damballa is a computer security company focused on advanced cyber threats such as modern malware, advanced persistent threats and botnets.[1][2] Damballa was founded in Atlanta, Georgia by Merrick Furst, an associate dean in the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) College of Computing[3]; he was joined by two Georgia Tech colleagues, Wenke Lee, and David Dagon.[4] It is named after Damballa, a Vodou snake god[5] that protects against zombies, with the implication that Damballa protects against “zombie” computers operating as part of botnets. Two venture capital firms, Sigma Partners and Nora Mosely Partners, and angel investors Imlay Investments, provided it with a combined US$2.5 million in Series A[3] (initial) funding. Furst chose Steve Linowes as CEO soon after founding, with assistance[5] from Imlay Investments. According to its site, Damballa now seeks primarily ISP and corporate clients.[6] They also have had at least one federal agency as a customer.[5] Damballa says they have government customers because of infrastructure security concerns.[4]. In August 2007, Damballa secured $US 6 million in Series B funding .[7]
Damballa’s current product offerings rely on the Failsafe appliance, which its marketing materials describe as real-time identification and remediation for zero-day targeted attack activity that takes place inside enterprise networks. Damballa claims that Failsafe gains a performance advantage because it does not rely on signatures to identify malware. Instead, it applies a range of analysis technologies to automatically identify communications between command-and-control servers and compromised systems, which simplifies and speeds the identification, isolation and remediation of advanced malware infections. These assertions have been borne out by at least one public case study created by a prominent industry analyst.