Cyera Ltd., a startup that helps organizations find and secure sensitive data in their cloud environments, has closed a $300 million funding round.

The company’s announcement of the Series C raise today comes about two weeks after reports first emerged that it’s raising new capital. Coatue led the round at a $1.4 billion valuation with participation from more than a half dozen other backers. AT&T Inc.’s venture capital arm, Accel and Sequoia Capital were among the participants.

Large enterprises’ information is often scattered across dozens or hundreds of applications. As a result, identifying data that might be stored insecurely or in breach of privacy regulations can be a highly time-consuming chore. The task is further complicated by the fact that workers regularly modify business records, which means new vulnerabilities can emerge over time.

New York-based Cyera offers a data security platform that promises to address those challenges. According to the company, its algorithms can scan an organization’s cloud-based file sharing tools, databases and other applications for sensitive records. Cyera then identifies records that might be stored in breach of cybersecurity requirements or privacy regulations.

The platform can find datasets that are kept in an unencrypted format or might be accessible through the public web. It also spots more subtle issues, such as cases when a sensitive file might be shared with an inactive employee account. Inactive accounts pose an unnecessary risk because they can potentially be compromised by hackers to gain data access.

Even a file that is stored in accordance with a company’s cybersecurity rules can potentially become a risk. Over time, the workers who interact with the file might change its settings in a way that could allow hackers to gain access. Alternatively, they might create copies and move them to an application with vulnerable settings.

Cyera says its platform continuously collects information about customers’ data environments to find new risks to existing files. The software can do so without installing agents, or data collection programs, in a company’s network. That makes it easier for administrators to set up Cyera’s platform in their organizations’ cloud deployments.

After it finds a cybersecurity issue, Cyera can automatically generate remediation suggestions. It also provides information about the severity of the issue and the systems that could be affected by a potential breach. According to the company, this information helps administrators prioritize their remediation efforts and fix the most urgent problems first.

Besides reducing the risk of breaches, Cyera says, it can also help enterprises reduce infrastructure costs. The company’s platform is capable of identifying unnecessary file copies that aren’t actively used by employees. Deleting such records both reduces a company’s attack surface and cuts storage expenses.

“CIOs and CISOs are realizing it is critical that they secure all of their enterprise data as an absolute necessity in order to thrive and survive in a new AI-driven world,” said Cyera co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Yotam Segev (pictured, left, with co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Tamar Bar-Ila). “Cyera is working closely and solving this problem for the world’s largest enterprises.”

Cyera’s latest funding round comes less than a year after it closed a $100 million investment led by Accel. At the time, the company disclosed that its revenue had grown by a factor of eight over the past year. Cyera will use the proceeds from its latest raise to hire more workers and expand its platform’s feature set.

Photo: Cyera