The prerequisite to targeting a system or an application is finding a suitable attack vector, which will become a lot harder for hackers if Morphisec Information Security Ltd. has its way. The Israeli startup announced the completion of a $7 million round this morning meant that will help spread its namesake memory randomization technology to more organizations.

The concept of obfuscating the hexadecimal sequences that dictate where data is stored on a machine is nothing new, with the Linux community having adopted the approach all the way back in 2002 and Microsoft Corp. following suit a few years later. But the native implementations, particularly Redmond’s, only provide superficial coverage of an operating system’s address space.

Morphisec uses technology developed at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University for military systems in order to increase the granularity of that protection beyond merely key sections of a machine’s memory to include libraries and other core components of an application. The randomization is applied when a user opens the program to generate a new memory layout every session.

That makes the application a moving target,  which effectively nullifies low-level attacks that rely on the hacker finding a specific address with the potential to be corrupted. As a result, Morphisec says that its technology can defend equally well against legacy exploits in unpatched enterprise applications and sophisticated zero-day vulnerabilities that the hacker specially dug up for a breach attempt.

Rounding out the offering is monitoring functionality that enables organizations to see exactly how a piece of malware attempts to exploit their applications, a feature that can help identify new threats faster and potentially more accurately. The vast potential of the technology is reflected in the list of high-profile backers that contributed to Morphisec’s new round, which includes Deutsche Telekom AG and General Electric Co.’s investment arm.

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