Data privacy engineering for cloud startup Piiano Privacy Solutions Ltd. today launched out of stealth mode with an announcement of $9 million in new funding to drive research and development and go-to-market efforts.

YL Ventures led the seed round. Also participating were Jibe Ventures and founders of leading cybersecurity companies such as Snyk Ltd., Armis Inc., Wiz Inc. and Aqua Security Software Ltd.

Founded by security experts Gil Dabah and Ariel Shiftan (pictured), whose cybersecurity firm NorthBit was acquired by Magic Leap in 2016, Piiano is being pitched as delivering the industry’s first personal data protection and management platform that transforms how enterprises build privacy-forward architecture and put privacy practices into operation.

The problem Piiano is looking to solve is one where enterprises who collect sensitive information, including finance, health, contact details and social security numbers, are at risk of compromise from a lack of adequate data protection solutions. The company says that data leaks, such as those experienced by T-Mobile and Facebook Inc., underscore that neither size nor massive security budgets assure consumer privacy. Piiano says privacy engineering, the practice of building privacy requirements into system architectures, enables organizations to scale their management and implementation more effectively and efficiently.

The company’s services start with Piiano’s Vault, a dedicated, protected database for centralizing sensitive information and a code scanner to locate personally identifiable information. Said to represent a technological and cultural shift in sensitive data handling, the platform allows security and privacy teams to monitor and gain data-driven insights into privacy artifacts. The coverage includes data from application codebases and the ability to partition and isolate personally identifiable information easily.

The Piiano Vault offers enterprises the infrastructure to centralize and secure PII, and select sensitive data within their own environments. Designed to be the home of all sensitive data and PII, Piiano Vault serves as a secure directory that keeps other data stores pseudonymized. Deployed in the enterprise’s virtual private cloud, the vault allows developers to build privacy while empowering privacy and security personnel to manage data, track its access and enforce advanced policies.

“Piiano’s cutting through privacy complexity with its privacy-forward approach, which encourages enterprises to treat all future incoming PII with the highest order of privacy mindfulness,” Justinian Fortenberry, global chief information security officer at Zip Co. Ltd., said in a statement. “Placing this sensitive information in the Piiano Vault helps resolve the risk faced in the event of a breach without having to risk more exposure.”

Photo: Piiano