Riverhead Networks

Riverhead Networks was a computer security company specializing in technology to protect against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Founded in 2000 in Tel Aviv, Israel, by Yehuda Afek, Anat Bremler-Barr, Dan Touitou, and Yuval Rachmilevitz, the company was initially named WanWall. With headquarters in Cupertino, California, and a development center in Israel, Riverhead provided solutions for enterprises and service provider networks.

The company's core technology focused on providing integrated analysis and enforcement to block DDoS attacks, which paralyze systems by overwhelming them with malicious traffic. Riverhead's products, the Riverhead Guard and Riverhead Detector, used sophisticated algorithms to distinguish between legitimate and malicious traffic, allowing businesses to maintain continuity even during an assault. The technology analyzed traffic flows against normal patterns to identify and mitigate both known and new security attacks. This was achieved through a multi-level evaluation process that diverted suspicious traffic, filtered out bad packets, and allowed legitimate traffic to pass through. The company's business model was based on selling hardware appliances that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Riverhead Networks secured initial funding from investors like Gemini Israel Funds, Koor Corporate Venture Capital, and Intel Capital. A subsequent Series B funding round in May 2002 raised $11 million from existing investors as well as Sequoia Capital and Cisco. On March 22, 2004, Cisco Systems announced its acquisition of Riverhead Networks for approximately $39 million in cash, a deal that was completed on April 15, 2004. Following the acquisition, Riverhead's 44 employees and its development center were integrated into Cisco's Internet Switching Business Unit.

Keywords: DDoS protection, network security, denial of service mitigation, cybersecurity appliance, threat detection, traffic analysis, Cisco acquisition, network behavior analysis, internet business continuity, enterprise security, service provider security, WanWall, Riverhead Guard, Riverhead Detector