Database security startup jSonar today said it has gotten itself some serious backing: Goldman Sachs, which has just invested $50 million as part of the company’s first institutional round of funding.

The Waltham, Massachusetts-based startup sells a security platform that helps to protect data and enforce compliance across more than 60 popular database platforms. Those include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Snowflake, MongoDB, Cassandra, Hadoop, Teradata and others.

The idea is to replace legacy database activity monitoring programs that involve monitoring each database and service individually, with a single, all-encompassing security platform. The company goes a bit further too, using machine learning to enable more preventive controls.

“JSonar provides security, compliance and risk management for everywhere data lives,” Mariah West, vice president of marketing at jSonar, told SiliconANGLE.

She explained that jSonar’s platform works by ingesting events in multiple dimensions and normalizing them into a single, universal view of where the data is, and what it is. The secret sauce though is a unique NoSQL column store that enables jSonar to mash up diverse types of data very effectively. This makes the jSonar platform incredibly efficient at data analytics and long-term retention, which are essential for securing and monitoring databases, West said.

“This flexibility also allows us to bridge the gap between on-premise and cloud so customers can freely move workloads into the cloud while ensuring consistent security controls at the data layer,” she added.

JSonar’s platform also has a machine learning component that deploys a combination of unsupervised and supervised analytics engines that transform raw data into actionable security intelligence.

“The User and Entity Behavior Analytics engines learn from what’s happening so they can instruct users what they should look at, what they should triage, and most importantly, they add context to tell the user what it all means,” West said. “The preventive capabilities are a post trigger. Once the UEBA detects an anomaly, instead of sending alerts, it can alter policies such as reducing privileges or preventing access all together.”

The new financial backing comes at a key moment for jSonar, which has already seen widespread adoption of its platform in the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries.

Looking ahead, West said jSonar plans to do a number of things, including adding sales, marketing and research and development staff to its team to help accommodate the company’s expected growth. The company will also use its new funds to grow into additional verticals outside of the U.S.

“With regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation, Europe is a prime area of focus,” West said “We currently have three of Europe’s largest banks as customers plus a few smaller banks, but that’s just the beginning.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that database security is paramount in these COVID-19 pandemic times, as they’re increasingly being targeted by hackers.

“Database contain vital information assets and enterprises need powerful solutions that help them protect database security, ideally across products and across deployment choices,” Mueller said. “That’s what jSonar does, and apparently it does it so well that Goldman Sachs not only uses its products, but wants in on the business too. It’s a nice win for JSonar, a good investment for Goldman and good news for JSonar customers too, as the vendor can now invest into a better product.”

Image: jSonar