Data center hardware and employee endpoints aren’t the only part of an organization’s infrastructure that needs to be protected from hackers. Companies in certain industries such as the manufacturing sector must also safeguard the industrial control systems that power their production equipment, which are emerging as an increasingly frequent target for attack.

This growing threat is what Switzerland’s Nozomi Networks SA hopes to tackle using the $7.5 million funding round that it raised from GGV Capital, Lux Capital and Planven Investments today.

The cash infusion will enable the startup to widen the adoption of its SCADAguardian platform, which uses machine learning technology to detect security issues in industrial gear. Upon installation, the software automatically maps out the environment where it’s deployed and starts scanning key components for unpatched vulnerabilities. Nozomi says that the detection algorithms under the hood also examine how each system is set up in the process to check if there are any configuration issues that might create an opening for attack.

After the initial assessment is complete, SCADAguardian starts enriching the information that it obtained about the environment with activity data to create a continuously updated profile of operations. Its threat detection algorithms use the resulting model as a reference for determining whether a certain action constitutes routine system behavior or an anomalous incident that warrants special attention. In the latter scenario, the software can automatically alert the information technology department to the issue via a built-in notification mechanism that helpfully provides an explanation of the root cause for administrators.

Moreover, organizations have the option of streaming activity data from SCADguardian to their firewalls and other external breach prevention tools to allow for immediate incident response. Nozomo claims that several major industrial companies are already its software to protect their production sites, including Italian energy giant Enel, which provides electricity to more than 61 million people around the world. But the startup can expect an increasingly hard time maintaining its current momentum amid the growing competition from rivaling security providers.

One of the fastest-rising contenders on the list is Indegy Inc., an Israeli startup that has developed an appliance for protecting oil rigs, power grids and other industrial infrastructure. The firm raised $12 million in funding of its own a few months ago to expand go-to-market efforts.

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