Data security startup Concentric Software Inc. said today it has snapped up a couple of smaller startups to bolster its comprehensive artificial intelligence-powered governance platform.

It said the acquisitions of Swift Security and Acante Inc. will enable it to unify its expertise in data security posture management, adding data loss prevention and generative AI governance tools that safeguard both structured and unstructured information in any computing environment.

Concentric AI, as the company likes to be known, had money to spend after securing $45 million in a Series B round of funding in October. It’s the creator of a popular platform for data access governance, called Concentric AI Semantic Intelligence.

It provides technology for security teams that allow them to protect data at rest, in motion and at use by cataloging all of that information with AI algorithms. It claims to be able to secure its customer’s most vital secrets, including the hard-coded key credentials that enable access to sensitive customer data and cloud services

The startup’s AI models work by seeking out all of a customer’s data – including that which lives in databases, chat applications, chatbots, email clients and so on — and flagging anything they find that’s deemed to be insecure. The company says it’s providing a vital service, because enterprises have so much information saved across so many disparate systems these days that they’re simply unaware of where it all lives, and whether or not it presents a security risk.

Now it has gone shopping, looking to improve on its existing features to offer more assurance to customers that their data will be secure when they use its platform.

The acquisition of Swift Security brings some useful capabilities to Concentric, making it possible for companies to discover when their employees are using public generative AI chatbots and search applications, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. Its software is designed to extend companies’ data oversight policies to these third-party tools to ensure they’re being used appropriately.

By integrating Swift’s capabilities into its semantic intelligence platform, Concentric says it will be able to identify risky behavior and stop sensitive details such as personally identifiable information, intellectual property, protected health information and financial transaction data from being shared with these applications.

The company adds that Swift’s technology enables security teams to closely monitor how people are using generative AI tools. It gives them the flexibility to allow sensitive content to be masked or anonymized before being uploaded to them, in cases where it might be necessary.

As for Acante, it’s the creator of a data access platform that will make it possible for Concentric users to curate the information that’s used to train or fine-tune generative AI models and applications before they are built. It explained that security teams will be able to peruse through AI training datasets carefully and exclude, redact, replace, mask or encrypt any sensitive information they find, ensuring their AI applications are compliant with privacy and safety regulations. It will also allow teams to set policies that govern access to the sensitive information used by AI apps for specific users and groups, based on companies’ internal data policies.

Concentric founder and Chief Executive Karthik Krishnan said the addition of Swift and Acante beef up its platform with more accurate data classifications and access policies. Those measures will be enhanced with continuous monitoring and remediation in order to eliminate risks such as overpermissioning and misclassification of data. He believes enterprises will be especially interested in its new generative AI safeguards.

“Generative AI is rapidly emerging as a critical threat vector and Concentric AI is rising to meet the challenge,” he said. “These acquisitions are evidence of our commitment to our ongoing mission to operationalize data security and protect our customers’ most sensitive data at scale and across all use cases – from gen AI apps to email, messaging, file sharing and everything in between.”

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