The cyber-crime fighters at Bit9 just raised $34.5 million from Sequoia and other investors

Sequoia Capital has led a $34.5 million investment round for Bit9, a company that provides security solutions to detect and prevent cyber threats.

Prior investors Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, KPCB and .406 Ventures also participated in the round.

Bit9 says will use this capital to fund new ‘advanced threat’ security product development efforts and expand sales and marketing capabilities.

The company asserts that traditional security solutions are insufficient to protect organizations from next-generation targeted attacks, and that its solutions are capable of protecting critical company servers and valuable intellectual property from sophisticated malware and other threats.

The company’s software basically protects from such cyber threats using what it calls ‘whitelisting’ — exclusively allowing trusted software to run as opposed to blacklisting certain software.

Bit9 says it currently protects more than 700 organizations across industry segments such as education, finance, government, healthcare, retail and utilities.

The company is privately held and based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Bit9 has secured $82.5 million in funding since its founding in 2002.