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The line between online security and reputation is blurring. ReputationDefender is a new kind of online security startup that helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. Last year, ReputationDefender raised $8.65 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins, which it is announcing today. The round came in two tranches, with $4 million form Bessemer in May, 2009 and another $4.65 million from Kleiner in August, 2009, with Bessemer participating again. David Cowan of Bessemer and Ted Schlein of Kleiner now have board seats, along with angel investor Mike Maples who led the Series A in 2008.

ReputationDefender sells four different security products on a monthly subscription basis (MyReputation, MyPrivacy, MyChild, and MyEdge) which lets you monitor information about you across the Web, as well as in semi-private databases, and helps you remove inaccurate information or counter by promoting your own vetted profile. CEO Michael Fertick thinks “we are entering a third phase of digital security.” The first phase was around protecting your devices from viruses and malware. The second was around financial payments and making sure people are who they claim to be. “Now we have a third phase,” he says. “Your whole life is on the Web. You live, work, date on the Web. Nobody has your back yet. Nobody gives you the tools to control your life on the Internet.”

Privacy might be dead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. ReputationDefender specializes in recursive search. It doesn’t just do a search on your name. It will match your name to your employer, college, address, and other information it knows about you so that it can pull up comments, blog posts, photos, and other mentions of you across the Web even if your full name isn’t used.

In computer science this is known as the persona isolation problem, or in national security circles the “27 Mohammeds problem.” How do you know that the John Smith mentioned in an online forum is your John Smith. But ReputationDefender has an edge. Fertick explains: “The unfair or competitive advantage is we are doing searches of our customers, who give us more information about themselves.” So it can narrow down, when someone is talking about you. And it constantly keeps an eye out for new mentions, so you don’t have to Google yourself every morning.

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