Israeli passwordless authentication startup Secret Double Octopus Ltd. said today it has raised $15 million in new funding to expand its platform of passwordless authentication and remote security in enterprise environments.

The Series B round included Sony Financial Ventures, KDDI, Global Brain, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures, Liberty Media, Iris Capital and Yaniv Tal.

Founded in 2015, Secret Double Octopus offers as its main product Octopus Authenticator, a password-free, keyless authentication technology to protect identity and data across cloud, mobile and “internet of things” environments. The service is said to be based on technology designed to protect nuclear launch codes — not that Israel admits to having nuclear weapons. It’s designed to prevent cyberattackers from accessing critical information that can be exploited to steal data.

In removing passwords, Secret Double Octopus claims that its service prevents credential theft, man-in-the-middle attacks, identity theft, phishing and other popular forms of attack vectors.

The company’s service works across cloud and virtual private network services, with support for Amazon Web Services Inc., Zoho Inc., Google LLC G Suite, Box Inc., Dropbox Inc., Saleforce Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. VPN, SAP Cloud and various others.

The funding, coming during the global COVID-19 pandemic, is said to be a positive step for the company to allow it to strengthen remote and on-site workforce security, which in turn will reduce help desk costs and minimize information technology operations.

“Turning enterprises to passwordless environments represent a dramatic shift in organizations’ cyber defense posture, limiting dramatically some of the world’s most threatening attack vectors,” Yoav Tzruya, general partner at JVP, said in a statement. “SDO’s traction to-date, with both enterprise customers, as well as mid-market demand, combined with the company’s open partnership approach, teaming up with the world leaders in identification, CASBs, VPNs, SSO and others, positions the company as a category leader.”

Including the new funding, Secret Double Octopus has raised $22.5 million to date.

Image: Secret Double Octopus/YouTube