Organizations have historically dealt with breach attempts by trying to block the hacker as fast as possible and only stopping to investigate after the fact. But now, the security community is starting to adopt a new approach: Letting attacks play out in controlled conditions to gain a deeper understanding of the threat. The method is being popularized mainly by emerging startups like Israel’s GuardiCore Ltd., which raised $20 million in funding this morning to fuel its efforts.

The capital will go first and foremost towards developing new features for its data center security platform, which employs deception tactics to trick hackers into showing their hands. The software reroutes suspicious connections to a sandbox where the attacker is allowed to carry out the actions they had intended to perform against their original target under observation. Built-in machine learning algorithms then utilize the information gleaned during the process to create an attack profile that is used to identify other occurrences of the threat on a company’s network. GuardiCore says that its technology is thereby able to detect everything from bots to skilled human hackers attempting to manually bypass a system’s security controls.

Once all the threats have been properly identified, the startup’s software displays the relevant information in a graphical dashboard that enables administrators to quickly understand the scope of the incident. The items are organized from top to bottom in order of severity to help the IT department prioritize its work. And for added measure, GuardiCore’s console displays automated recommendations on how to solve the issue alongside the entries to try and hurry up the subsequent clean-up process.

In addition to enhancing its platform’s capabilities, the startup also plans on using today’s funding to step up marketing efforts and expand its partner ecosystem. Most of the cash came from existing investors Battery Ventures and 83North (previously Greylock IL), while the rest was provided by Cisco System Inc.’s venture capital arm. GuardiCore has raised a total of $33 million to date.

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