Silverfort Inc., a startup that helps organizations block malicious login requests targeting their internal applications, has raised $65 million in funding to support growth initiatives.

The company announced the funding round this morning. Greenfield Partners led the investment, while GM Ventures, Acrew Capital, Vintage Investment Partners and multiple existing backers contributed as well. Silverfort has raised more than $100 million in funding since launching.

Enterprises use a type of software known as an identity and access management, or IAM, system to manage access to their applications. A company’s IAM system regulates which employee can log into what application and how. It often also provides related features such as multifactor authentication.

Organizations frequently use a cloud-based IAM system to manage applications running in the public cloud and a second, separate IAM system to support on-premises workloads. Using two separate tools for on- and off-premises applications complicates administrators’ work in certain respects. Tasks such as ensuring cybersecurity policies are implemented correctly, for example, can require more effort.

Silverfort offers an identity threat protection platform that promises to ease the task of managing application access requests. Using the startup’s platform, a company can connect its on-premises and cloud workloads to a single cloud-based IAM system. The result is that administrators can manage application access attempts through one system instead of having to use two separate tools.

In addition to streamlining administrators’ work, Silverfort promises to help companies improve their cybersecurity. Many IAM systems provide multifactor authentication features, but some enterprise applications can’t use those features because of technical limitations. According to the company, its platform is capable of extending MFA support to applications that didn’t use the technology before. 

“Identity security can no longer be a ‘feature’ that works in silos within each IAM platform, while leaving many sensitive resources out of scope,” said Silverfort co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Hed Kovetz. “This lack of end-to-end identity threat protection has turned identity into today’s No. 1 attack surface, with compromised credentials being leveraged in 80% of all data breaches and ransomware campaigns. This problem required a new approach to identity security.”

Another component of Silverfort’s cybersecurity approach is automatic threat detection. The startup uses artificial intelligence to detect malicious login requests targeting a company’s systems. According to Silverfort, its AI analyzes up to 50 times more data than competing tools to determine if a login attempt is malicious and then automatically decides whether or not to approve the request. 

A key selling point of Silverfort’s platform is that it’s designed to be simple to set up. The platform can be implemented in a company’s technology environment without changing any applications or updating the configuration of servers. This saves a potentially significant amount of manual work, which makes it more practical for new enterprise customers to deploy Silverfort’s technology.

The startup says that its annual recurring revenue tripled in the runup to the new round round. According to Silverfort, 90% of organizations that try out its platform eventually become customers. More than 200 companies have signed up as customers so far, including big names such as United Parcel Service of America Inc. 

Image: Silverfort