App cybersecurity startup Canonic Security launched out of stealth mode today with $6 million in new funding to accelerate its go-to-market and development initiatives.

Investors in the seed round included First Round Capital, Elron Ventures, SV Angel and Operator Partners.

Led by cybersecurity industry veterans Boris Gorin, a former senior director at enterprise security company Proofpoint Inc., and Niv Steingarten, co-founder and vice president of software analytics company OverOps Inc., Canaonic is offering a cybersecurity product designed to protect software-as-a-service applications.

Canonic argues that highly composable environments integrate business application components from third parties and citizen developers without requiring standardized vendor controls, ultimately expanding the attack surface. Hence, security and information technology teams become overburdened by app vetting and approval processes.

IT teams are also said to struggle with allowing employees to introduce needed apps to existing IT-approved business applications. Canonic automatically maps business applications’ interconnectivity, uncovers harmful, vulnerable, or overprivileged apps and integrations, and reduces the risks involved with third-party application programming interface access.

“The SaaS ecosystem continues to grow, as organizations increasingly benefit from ease of access and interconnection,” said Boris Gorin, co-founder and CEO of Canonic Security. “However, legacy CASB and SSPM technologies fail to adequately protect mission-critical business applications.”

The company also unveiled the Canonic App Governance platform, powered by the industry’s first app sandbox. The commercially available platform is claimed to redefine SaaS application security by allowing enterprises to simulate third-party apps and SaaS-native code behavior in its SaaS sandbox environment before granting access to organizations’ business applications.

Although only launching out of stealth today, Canonic already has more than 20 deployments worldwide. The Canonic App Governance platform has sandboxed tens of thousands of apps, protecting hundreds of thousands of users across several industries including healthcare, defense and software organizations.

Canonic’s headcount is currently at  30. Company employees include cyber researchers and engineers who previously worked at security companies such as PerimeterX Inc., Sygnia Inc. and Proofpoint.

Image: Canonic