Quietly and stealthily, Heimdall Networks of Sydney spent last year raising more than $1 million in angel funding and began developing its software that protects corporations and governments against distributed denial-of-service attacks.

CEO Jim Deleskie said the company should have a product ready to beta-test in the first half of this year, and a few large organizations outside the region have given verbal commitments to be early adopters.

The first customers for the product will likely be in the United States, Deleskie said.

The company will provide a cure for a huge pain point as distributed denial-of-service attacks have plagued more governments, companies and organizations in the past few years.

These attacks swamp an organization’s website and/or network with unwanted traffic, disabling all its online functions. They have become more frequent because of the development and distribution of relatively simple tools needed to make the attacks.

“This is the kind of problem that can affect just about anyone because everybody at some time has made someone unhappy — whether it’s firing someone or not hiring someone,” said Deleskie. “Our technology will identify the legitimate and the not-legitimate traffic, and will filter out the bad while letting the good stuff through.”

Heimdall plans to differentiate itself from other companies providing distributed-denial-of-service protection, especially Arbor Networks of Burlington, Mass., which is dominant in the market for telecom carriers. Delekie declined to say exactly what his company will do differently than its competitors, although he did say its market would be a general enterprise application rather than a specific targeting of the carrier market.

Having previously worked on security for a major carrier, Deleskie said he appreciates the need for a product that can be scaled up to handle the needs of multinational corporations or large governments.

Once the product can handle large customers, it is simple to scale down to suit smaller clients, he said.

Deleskie and his sales and marketing partner, Kevin McHugh, have flown beneath most people’s radars as they built up their staff to six members and took office space in Sydney. But their funding from a single Nova Scotian investor ranks as one of the largest angel fundings in the region last year.

More money may have been raised by Clarity of Moncton ($1.6 million) and LeadSift of Halifax ($1.1 million), but those deals include venture capital investors alongside angels. Heimdall has also had discussions about possible funding with Innovacorp and Enterprise Cape Breton Corp.

Heimdall is now well enough capitalized that it will be financed through the launch of its product, and Deleskie does not know yet whether he will need more capital once he has to roll the product out to the larger market.

Deleskie said it has proved hard to find staff because so many developers are working in web or mobile applications rather than security software development, yet five of the six employees are based in its Sydney headquarters.

“What we’re really hoping for is that as we grow, we can attract more people from Nova Scotia who would be interested in working in Sydney.”