Blockfenders Inc., a startup with a blockchain-powered platform that promises to help companies share data more securely with one another, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding.

The Palo Alto, California-based startup announced the investment this morning. More than a dozen venture capital firms and angel investors participated. Co-founder and Chief Executive Viraj Phanse has worked at Amazon Web Services Inc., Oracle Corp., Persistent Systems Inc. and Aerospike Inc., and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Niranjan Ingale led engineering teams at AllScripts Healthcare LLC and Persistent.

Organizations often share data with one another to support business initiatives. Two startups working to integrate their software-as-a-service applications, for example, might share certain source code. According to Blockfenders, traditional approaches to sharing business data often involve a significant amount of manual work and require specialized technical know-how.

Blockfenders’ namesake platform enables companies to share information through a no-code interface. According to the startup, its platform makes it possible to create a software workflow for sharing records between organizations in a few minutes. The result is that data analytics initiatives can be launched faster.

The company also promises to improve data security in the process by using blockchain technology to protect the information that customers share with one another. Before a company shares information with an external party, it can use the platform to carry out data masking. That’s the term for a cybersecurity method designed to reduce the risk posed by cyberattacks. Using data masking, a company can replace sensitive information in a file with a placeholder that doesn’t become a cybersecurity risk if the file is stolen by hackers.

Blockfenders secures the datasets it processes with end-to-end encryption. Records are encrypted before they’re sent over the network and can only be decrypted by the recipient.

According to the company, its platform uses smart contracts to regulate user access to shared datasets. Smart contracts are programs that run on a blockchain and carry out a predefined action when certain conditions are met. Such programs can, for example, decrypt a dataset protected by end-to-end encryption after determining that a user access request is legitimate.

For added measure, Blockfenders stores an immutable log of data access requests processed by its platform. The log can’t be modified, which prevents hackers from hiding attempts to steal or change business information. The platform’s features enable the recipients of a dataset to continuously verify its integrity.

“We are democratizing data sharing by enabling business, research and non-technical folks to share data from their own environment without writing any code or worrying about privacy, security and implementation,” said Ingale. “Now organizations can easily establish a single source of truth of data and share data in a fine-grained manner while meeting stringent regulations and compliances.”

Blockfenders detailed today that a digital healthcare company focused on eye care and a “global employee engagement platform provider” are currently piloting its platform. Additionally, the startup says its platform has drawn interest from two major banks. It will use its new funding round to grow its market presence in the healthcare, financial services and technology sectors.

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