6Scan raises a round to provide automated security for web sites

6Scan, which offers a web site protection suite that automatically detects and fixes security vulnerabilities, announced today it has received an investment from venture capital firm YL Ventures.

The Tel Aviv-based company is trying to make it easier for small companies to escape being hacked. In 2010, more than 1.5 million web sites were hacked. If it works, it could go a long way toward giving small businesses peace of mind and a measure of protection from hacker attackers.

“It’s time for web site security to be like anti-virus software: strong protection that’s so easy to use, everyone has it,” said Yaron Tal, co-founder and chief technology officer.

6Scan says it can bring security to everyone by providing a comprehensive security solution that is easy to use and costs as little as $10 a month. The company’s 6Scan Patrol is like a “white hat hacker,” or one that monitors web sites for known and unknown threats. Meanwhile, 6Scan Bodyguard automatically fixes vulnerabilities before hackers can find them.

Nitzan Miron, (pictured) co-founder and chief executive, said that hosting companies can help distribute 6Scan’s solution, since they can offer it as part of a collection of value-added services for small businesses.

6Scan uses both active and passive protection, providing levels of security that it says are unavailable to all but the most high-end and big-budget web sites. The product is designed for web site owners with no technical or security knowledge.

Yoav Andrew Leiterdorf, managing partner at YL Ventures, is joining the 6Scan board. Other funding came from Israeli startup accelerator VentureGeeks.

“Existing security solutions for websites are either complex to use or expensive, causing most small sites – over 300 million of which existed in May 2011 – to skip security altogether and remain highly vulnerable, said Leiterdorf.

The company has five employees and is recruiting more developers. 6Scan was founded in 2011, after the founders got repeat calls from friends whose web sites had been hacked. Their friends always asked how they could stop that from happening again, but the founders — who both have nearly a decade in security technology — could find no answer; so they invented their own solution.

Competitors include web application scanners such as Qualys, web application firewalls, and proxy security firms. Miron says that web application scanners usually don’t fix vulnerabilities, and 6Scan can automatically find and fix vulnerabilities without requiring knowledge.

Miron also says that web application firewalls by design cannot be installed on shared hosting, which accounts for most of the sites today. Also, these firewalls require security expertise to install, for the most part. 6Scan can be installed with one click. Proxy security redirects traffic from a web site to servers, but those servers can be bypassed, allowing hackers to directly attack a protected web site. And the web site will fail if the proxy servers fail.