Cloud data protection startup Nightfall AI said today it has raised $40 million in new funding to extend its reach, expand its integration and partner ecosystem, and develop new products.

WestBridge Capital led the Series B round. Bain Capital Ventures, Venrock, Pear VC and several individual investors, including actor Paul Rudd, also participated. Including the new round, The company has raised $60.3 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Founded in 2018, Nightfall AI offers a cloud data loss prevention platform designed to enable organizations to discover, classify and protect sensitive data across all of its cloud applications and services. The platform uses machine learning to detect sensitive data with high accuracy across applications and automatically fixes data exposure and hygiene issues without end-user impact.

The company argues that with the sheer volume of data and rapid growth in the number of cloud applications in the enterprise, data sprawl is pervasive and getting worse. The shift to a hybrid workplace has eroded the traditional perimeter, resulting in poor data security hygiene and accidental exposure.

“Legacy solutions aren’t designed for the cloud and don’t interface natively with modern applications and as a result, they deliver low accuracy, incomplete coverage and limited actionability for resource-constrained security teams,” said Isaac Madan, Nightfall’s co-founder and chief executive. “Traditional data loss prevention solutions have become ineffective and expensive to manage and the category is in dire need of reinvention.”

Features of the platform include invisible, out-of-the-box deployment with integrations that include Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Google Drive, Slack and Salesforce with no end-user impact or agents to install. High-accuracy detection in the platform prioritizes issues with credentials, secrets, personally identifiable information and protected health information to eliminate alert fatigue, according to the company.

In-application remediation and data context in Nightfall’s platform result in action on sensitive data at a granular level. Users obtain full context on violations and can automate the response, minimizing overhead, it adds.

On the developer side, Nightfall data protection, combined with the Nightfall Developer Platform, provides an open, flexible platform for developers to integrate its data classification and protection capabilities anywhere. The platform delivers the detection engine as a set of cloud-hosted application programming interfaces and software development kits. The company has partnerships with Snyk Ltd., Cribl Inc., Virtru Corp., Hanzo Archives Inc. and others to expand its partner capabilities by embedding its detection capabilities into their offerings.

The company said it has seen rapid growth, with clients from tech startups to Fortune 100 enterprises in areas such as healthcare, insurance and education. Notable customers include Acquia Inc., Bluecore Inc., Aaron’s Co. Inc., Klaviyo Inc. and Eullcian Co. LP.

Photo: Nightfall AI