Memcyco Gets $37M to Fight AI-Powered Impersonation Attacks

A digital risk protection platform led by the ex-CEO of Memco raised $37 million to address brand impersonation scams, account takeover and social media impersonation.

See Also: AI Turning Tool Sprawl Into an Attack Surface

The Series A funding will fuel Boston-based Memcyco’s evolution from defending against website impersonation to tackling complex account takeover scenarios with real-time, preemptive detection, said co-founder and CEO Israel Mazin. Unlike rivals that rely on reactive takedown strategies or post-login behavioral analysis, Mazin said Memcyco’s solution detects threats before an attack unfolds.

“We have more demand than the salespeople and the support can take, so this is a good place to be,” Mazin told Information Security Media Group. “We saw that there are many potential clients that we cannot serve with the current manpower and the current resources that we have. So, this is why we decided this is the best time to do a round.”

Memcyco, founded in 2021, employs 81 people and has raised $47 million, having last completed a $10 million seed round in May 2023 led by Capri Ventures and Venture Guides. The company has been led since inception by Mazin, who led security software publisher Memco in the 1990s and sold it to database management software company Platinum Technology for $550 million in March 1999 (see: Human Threat Intel Anchors ZeroFox’s Security Vision).

How AI Has Changed Brand Impersonation Scams

For Memcyco’s Series A round, strategic investors such as the corporate venture arm of the National Bank of Canada and the family office of Bain Capital co-chairman Steve Pagliuca were brought in because of their deep industry networks and prior relationships with the company. Mazin said their money will fuel the release of new features and tools designed to counter rapidly evolving cyberthreats.

“We wanted to do $25 million, but we had much higher demand,” Mazin said. “We had a lot of push to take more here, take more there from the investors that were really excited and also our current investors wanted to invest. So, then we increased it $12 more million.”

Attackers can now instruct an artificial intelligence model to create an exact replica of a target website or social media profile without directly copying the original content, which Mazin said makes it harder for conventional threat detection systems to flag the impersonation. Memcyco is investing in AI-powered algorithms to detect these AI-driven threats with algorithms that are flexible and dynamic, Mazin said.

“If you could create 10 attacks, you now create 2,000 attacks,” Mazin said. “It’s a different volume than it was before. That can be 1,000 times more because of this creating automatically. When it’s with AI, it’s harder to catch it and detect. We find and continue to develop an algorithm to detect that something is coming from scammed AI.”

Memcyco doesn’t just block impersonation scams or account takeover attempts, Mazin said, but also alerts organizations in real time and identifies which users were targeted. The company started by addressing impersonation attacks like fake websites and apps but has since expanded into social media protection and account takeover detection, and intends to build a comprehensive platform, he said.

“We know how to catch that attack before it’s starting, and then alert on it and protect against it,” Mazin said. “So, the main difference is that it’s a preemptive, real-time solution that the other solutions are not doing. We are the only solution that can also show you who are the victims that will fall to these scams? And this is very critical, because then they can protect them.”

How Memcyco Plans to Thwart Social Media Impersonation

While many vendors in the market focus on identifying account takeover attempts at the login stage or once a breach has begun, Memcyco targets phishing sites, fake landing pages and impersonation campaigns that aim to harvest credentials before an authentication event even occurs. The platform uses predictive signals and behavioral patterns to detect and stop these attacks as early as possible.

“Most of the account takeover products that you have act when you access the login or inside the organization,” Mazin said. “We developed something outside of the perimeter. Even before they try to access, we know that something was going to happen.”

Memcyco boosted its platform to include detection and mitigation of fake executive profiles, fraudulent advertisements and brand misuse, with attacks often involving fake promotions designed to lure users into entering credentials or financial data, Mazin said. Future development will focus on integrating these capabilities into a centralized dashboard, improving speed and expanding detection using AI.

“We know to detect fake profiles, fake advertisements about them or if they use fake profiles of their executive,” Mazin said. “We have this detection, but we need to expand it. We can find immediately when they put a new fake profile or advertise. We can catch it immediately.”

Most organizations already have solutions for threat intelligence or takedown services, but lack visibility into the pre-login activity layer, which Mazin said is often exploited in impersonation scams and AI-generated attacks. Instead of displacing vendors, Memcyco integrates alongside intelligence tools such as PhishLabs and ZeroFox, enhancing the organization’s ability to detect and prevent early-stage scams.

“90% of the companies that we sold to added us to their current solutions,” Mazin said. “They added us because it’s the capabilities that they didn’t have before.”