Venice Security Ltd., formerly Valkyrie, announced its launch on Wednesday with $33 million in total funding, including $25 million in early-stage funding.

The Series A funding was led by IVP with participation from Index Ventures, Vine Ventures, Holly Ventures and multiple angel investors.

The company provides a platform that acts as an adaptive privileged access management platform, or PAM, a security strategy that builds processes to secure and control administrative “privileged” accounts with elevated access to critical systems. The methodology enforces the principle of least privilege to reduce the likelihood that credentials can be stolen, data can be leaked or attackers can readily access sensitive parts of a network.

“The way organizations manage access isn’t keeping up with how business operates today,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Rotem Lurie. “Teams move faster, environments shift constantly, and AI is accelerating operations across the enterprise and threat actors. Access control needs to match that tempo.”

Venice said it’s trying to turn the current method for PAM on its head. For decades it has been controlled through password vaults, password rotation and slow approval, built for on-premises servers and small information technology teams. That paradigm is shifting with the reality of cloud technology and the looming reality of artificial intelligence systems that are changing how human-machine interfacing works.

Today, large enterprises already handle tens of thousands of human, machine and AI identities across cloud, software-as-a-service and automated systems. That makes managing identity and access even harder alongside security. Now that attackers have access to AI systems to build sophisticated attacks that can mimic human behavior and outside business logic, the speed and sophistication of attacks are changing, requiring equally sophisticated responses.

“Venice is on a mission to provide real-time access, granted only when required, and removed the moment it’s not,” said Lurie.

Ideally, Lurie said, access should be ephemeral, existing only for as long as it’s needed — granted immediately and vanishing the moment the need is gone. The importance is obvious: When machines are interacting, it means that no subsequent request from a potential attacker can possibly piggyback along.

Venice calls this adaptive permission. It’s not a new thing in the industry; it’s becoming a practice required for real-time survival. The company called identity the “front door” and privileged access the “master key,” irrespective of whether the user is a person or an autonomous agent.

The company said this round matters now because it will allow the company to build faster. It will also let them support more global enterprise interests operating at scale and keep pushing an industry that is adopting cloud and AI faster than ever.

Image: Jan Alexander/Pixabay