Data detection and response platform provider Cyberhaven Inc. is pushing to disrupt the world of data security after landing $33 million in an oversubscribed funding round today.

The Series B round brings its total amount raised to $52 million to date. Redpoint Ventures led the round with participation from new investors Forgepoint Capital and Wing, plus existing investors Vertex Ventures US, Costanoa, and Crane.

Cyberhaven reckons it has created a new approach to protecting enterprises’ critical business data, based on the idea of constantly tracing the flow of information through an organization. It sells a software-as-a-service platform that offers complete visibility into the behavior and movement of sensitive data across cloud and on-premises environments.

The platform collects events from endpoints and cloud applications, automatically discovers and tracks sensitive content of any type, then uses graph analytics to identify risk. It does this without complex rules or tagging. Security teams gain precise control over how any of their data moves with the ability to block, alert or coach users in real time, the company said.

The idea is users can better understand data loss and reduce the time it takes to detect and address any incidents. Cyberhaven claims it can analyze and record the flow of data across all sectors and detect any suspected security incidents, alerting teams in the process.

The approach is quite different from traditional data loss prevention and cloud access security broker tools, because it doesn’t require companies to make any changes to their data, applications, cloud services or the information technology infrastructure these run on. Furthermore, users aren’t required to create security policies to deploy Cyberhaven.

Today’s funding round serves to validate Cyberhaven’s data security model. Axos Financial Inc. Chief Information Security Officer Raghu Valipireddy further corroborated its claims. He said Cyberhaven shows that traditional data loss prevention tools are outdated in an age when most organizations have shifted to the cloud.

“Work environments are much different today than when these tools were originally conceived,” he explained. “The adoption of cloud technologies and remote work have further deteriorated the efficacy of these tools. Cyberhaven’s innovative approach to detect and prevent data loss via data tracing technology is a game changer and will result in much higher accuracy and greater simplicity in our data protection program.”

Cyberhaven Chief Executive Howard Ting said what his company really does is put data at the center of the security model. That’s different from most data loss prevention, cloud access security broker and insider risk tools, which he said merely “nibble” at disparate parts of the data security problem without solving the underlying cause.

“We are disrupting these product categories, using data lineage to automatically find and protect sensitive data of any type, in any file format, anywhere in the enterprise,” Ting explained. “This breakthrough innovation enables workflows to move to the cloud without enterprises losing visibility and control of what matters most — the data.”

Image: Cyberhaven