Application programming interface security startup FireTail Inc. announced today that it has raised $5 million in new funding to expand coverage to multiple code languages, cloud platforms and geographies.

The seed round was led by Paladin Capital Group, with Zscaler Inc., General Advance, Secure Octane and several high-profile cybersecurity executives also participating.

Co-founded in 2021 by IT practitioner and former Rapid7 Inc. senior director Jeremy Snyder and DevOps engineer Riley Priddle, FireTail was launched with a vision to prevent API-based data breaches. The company enables organizations to maintain continuous visibility over their APIs, monitor for threats and prevent breaches with a unique, end-to-end focus on the application layer of cloud-native applications.

FireTail argues that existing API security solutions are largely legacy, single-silo solutions repurposed to focus on APIs. Although they can help, they typically focus on just a part of the problem. By contrast, FireTail allows customers to solve critical issues facing APIs by sitting at the application layer, with complete visibility and runtime blocking controls.

The company’s approach came from analyzing breaches against APIs for root causes and engineering a solution from scratch specifically to address pain points.

Despite its relative youth, FireTail is engaged with several early adopters across North America, the Asia-Pacific and Europe, with hundreds of APIs secured and millions of events observed. FireTail says it’s helping early-access customers to build a quick and complete API inventory and then find and eliminate API security issues.

FireTail is also taking a collaborative approach to product development, partnering directly with cloud-native and API-centric customers to solve the most pressing challenges around API security. The company has new initiatives under development with customers to provide true end-to-end API security.

“Fundamentally, the root causes of API data breaches are application logic problems,” Snyder explained. “Our library makes it easy to execute inline, preventative checks against the main attack vectors.”

Along with the main investors, cybersecurity professionals participating in the funding round include SentinelOne Inc. Vice President of Cloud Security Ely Kahn, Intel 471 Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Arena and Shift5 Inc. CEO Josh Lospinoso.

Image: FireTail