SecuriThings Inc. today said that it has closed a $14 million funding round led by Aleph VC to help enterprises manage the growing number of “internet of things” devices connected to their networks.

Existing investor Firstime VC chipped in to the Series A round as well, along with unnamed angel investors.

IoT devices present several challenges for information technology teams. There’s the oft-discussed challenge of preventing breaches, which is difficult because many IoT devices ship with only minimal  security features. Another source of complexity is maintenance: the more systems a company has, the more manual work is involved in keeping them running smoothly.

The issue is compounded by the sheer number of devices entering the corporate network. A manufacturing facility, for example, might have a fleet of robotic arms, internet-connected smoke detectors, smart parking meters and a centralized cooling system that links to a cloud management console. When a company owns multiple types of devices with vastly different maintenance requirements, it’s difficult to develop efficient manual processes to manage them. 

SecuriThings has built a cloud service that enables IT teams to perform both maintenance and security tasks in the same interface. “We initially started with IoT cybersecurity and quickly discovered a major problem our customers were facing that no one was solving,” detailed SecuriThings Chief Executive Roy Dagan. “There are ‘IoTOps’ teams within these organizations responsible for managing many of these tasks manually, including ensuring devices are online, fixing issues, effecting upgrades, etc. — and they are overwhelmed.”

SecuriThings says that consolidating the management workflow in one product improves efficiency. The startup’s service provides features for rolling out device updates and detects systems experiencing technical issues. To help companies cut infrastructure costs, SecuriThings flags systems that overburden the network or storage backend.

One scenario where that’s useful is if an industrial sensor generates more data than is strictly needed to monitor equipment health. When the excess data is sent to the cloud for analysis, it creates unnecessary bandwidth costs. Reducing such inefficiencies can add up significantly in a big company. 

On the security side, meanwhile, SecuriThings scans devices for unmodified default login details and other configuration issues that hackers could exploit to launch attacks. The service also looks for hacking attempts already in progress by analyzing device activity data.

“Until SecuriThings came along, there were these massive enterprise software categories of automation, orchestration, and observability just waiting to be built for IoT,” said Aleph General Partner Aaron Rosenson. “SecuriThings is pulling them all together.”

SecuriThings says that its service is used by dozens of customers including an unnamed Ivy League university, financial institutions, retailers and others. With the extra $14 million on its books, the startup will develop more features for the service to enhance its value as an all-in one device management solution. Another  part of the funding will go toward sales and marketing.

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