GLASGOW, Scotland, October 1 /PRNewswire/ --

Metaforic, a leading provider of anti-tamper solutions, today announced the closure of a US$2 million funding round from software specialist venture capitalists Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund. The funding will be used to enhance Metaforic's European presence and to expand the company's worldwide operations including sales and marketing in the United States.

Metaforic provides real world solutions to the increasing threat of software hacking, loss of software integrity, and data theft. In response to the growing commercial demand for software protection and integrity, this injection of capital will allow Metaforic to bring its groundbreaking technology - MetaFortress - to market. The funding comes on the heels of Metaforic being named as one of the security industry's rising stars. Last month, Metaforic was selected as a semi-finalist in the Global Security Challenge (GSC). The GSC is a worldwide organization which runs an international business competition to find and select the most promising security startups.

"The technology and product that the team at Metaforic have built and their initial go-to-market has been very impressive," said Sandy McKinnon, partner with Pentech Ventures. "We believe that the MetaFortress approach is the most technically advanced method of software protection currently available, but more than that it is in addressing the ease of use and minimizing the overhead in any application performance that positions Metaforic as a potentially world-leading company in this space. MetaFortress is a product that could take military-grade security to mass market software.

"Also Metaforic have solutions that are unique for cloud computing, which could make them very strategic to the uptake of that technology. We are very excited to be working with the team on this first phase of building Metaforic," added McKinnon.

With enterprise software hacking at its highest level of penetration to date, the need for robust and effective security solutions is a major concern. MetaFortress uses advanced techniques to provide pervasive protection to software in a manner that makes the effort involved in hacking extremely tedious and lengthy to even the most sophisticated pirates. With MetaFortress, protection times that average in the minutes are transformed into protection times lasting months or even years.

"Current products on the market offer limited protection, huge performance penalties and complicated, lengthy deployment procedures," said Andrew McLennan, CEO of Metaforic. "MetaFortress makes no such compromises. MetaFortress offers the highest level of software protection on the market, with near zero performance impact, yet it only takes about an hour to deploy. With our recent investment from Pentech and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund, we are well positioned to expand our organization and introduce MetaFortress to the worldwide market."

About Metaforic

Headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, with offices in San Jose, Calif., Metaforic develops anti-tamper products to protect any software application, as well as DRM systems, Client Applications and License Management Systems. 'MetaFortress' armors applications from the inside out, preventing and protecting against all forms of tampering, piracy and the most sophisticated hacking attacks. Metaforic's revolutionary software is easy to use and offers extreme protection with near zero performance impact. Further information is available at Metaforic's website www.metaforic.com

About Pentech Ventures

Pentech Fund I was launched in July 2001 to invest in early stage software companies in the UK and Ireland, and made 11 investments, three of which have exited, with the remaining portfolio at varying stages of development. Pentech Fund II was launched in November 2007, and will invest in UK/Eire companies in enterprise software, telecoms software, Internet, mobile, embedded applications, and tech media.

The Pentech Partners and Advisory Group Members have gained considerable experience in founding, developing and exiting software businesses, both in Europe and in the US, with a number of the Advisory Group team being based in the US. Pentech utilizes the wide experience of the team, together with our international network of industry contacts, to identify software opportunities with global potential, and to work with these companies to realize that potential.

The Pentech Fund is managed by Pentech Ventures LLP, and numbers the European Investment Fund amongst its investors. Pentech Ventures is regulated by the FSA. http://www.pentechvc.com

MEDIA CONTACTS: Andrew McLennan Paul Roberts Metaforic, Ltd. Davies Murphy Group +44-(0)-141-333-6580 +1-781-418-2418 andrew.mclennan@metaforic.com metaforic@daviesmurphy.com www.metaforic.com www.daviesmurphy.com Web site: http://www.metaforic.com http://www.pentechvc.com

MEDIA, Andrew McLennan of Metaforic, Ltd., +44-(0)-141-333-6580, andrew.mclennan@metaforic.com, or Paul Roberts of Davies Murphy Group, +1-781-418-2418, metaforic@daviesmurphy.com