Artificial intelligence-powered cloud risk resolution platform startup ZEST Security Inc. today launched with $5 million in funding to develop and scale up its platform.

The company was founded by Snir Ben Shimol and Uri Aronovici (pictured), both former Israeli Defense Forced Intelligence officers with experience at companies including Akamai Technologies Inc. and Varonis Systems Inc. ZEST offers a platform that correlates and pinpoints the root cause of cloud risks to craft resolution paths that eliminate cloud vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that attackers can exploit.

It’s seeking to address the issue wherein today’s security tools are rich in identifying cloud risks, vulnerabilities and misconfiguration but fall short with remediation that is typically manual, time-consuming and at times impossible. ZEST argues that once a potential risk is identified, significant back-and-forth between teams is required to validate the risk, understand the root cause and determine the best resolution.

The company claims that, on average, it takes 30 to 60 days to remediate a single cloud security risk and 80% of resolved risks resurface shortly after remediation. The delays in remediating vulnerabilities not only cost organizations millions in operational spending but also directly contribute to the successful exploitation of known cloud risks.

ZEST’s offering is all about eliminating cloud vulnerabilities and misconfigurations at large scale. The company offers comprehensive resolution paths that offer both mitigation and remediation strategies.

The mitigation options offered leverage existing tools to immediately diffuse risk where remediation is not feasible. Its holistic remediation is aimed at addressing the root cause of the problem down to the originating lines of code, allowing security and DevOps teams to take down more issues with minimal changes.

Other features include Security as Code, with the service remediating cloud vulnerabilities and misconfigurations using Infrastructure as Code to prevent risks from resurfacing and similar risks from emerging in the future. The company also offers a range of open-source tools with single-click integration and execution to allow security teams to validate effective risk remediation by following the “trust but verify” principle.

“In recent years, the focus has been on cloud risk identification, but what we now have is a ‘failure to remediate’ problem,” Chief Executive Officer Shimol explained. “By providing security teams with resolution paths whether that’s mitigation using existing tools or preventative remediation using IaC. organizations can finally level the playing field with threat actors.”

The $5 million in funding came from Hanaco Venture Capital Ltd., Silvertech Ventures LP and a number of unnamed angel investors.

Photo: ZEST Security