Fast-growing data security startup Cyera US Inc. today announced that it has raised $100 million from a group of prominent backers.

The investment, a Series B round, brings the total amount of capital raised by the startup since its launch to $160 million. Accel was the lead investor in the round. Sequoia, Redpoint Ventures and Cyberstarts participated as well.

Cyera will use the capital to enhance its namesake cybersecurity platform. The platform uses large language models to create an inventory of the datasets scattered across a company’s software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service environments. The models then flag sensitive records that are stored in an insecure manner.

Certain types of sensitive records, such as credit card numbers, are fairly simple to detect. The reason is that credit card numbers almost always follow the same format. Detection algorithms must simply find every piece of data that matches the format.

But other types of sensitive records, such as user passwords, often vary significantly in structure and content. That increases the chance of a detection algorithm accidentally missing such information, which limits enterprises’ ability to track their data assets. According to Cyera, its platform addresses the challenge.

The platform includes built-in definitions for hundreds of data types. When Cyera’s algorithms find a new record, they compare the record against the built-in data definitions to determine if it may contain sensitive information. Moreover, it automatically refines its data definitions based on a company’s internal information troves, which further increases detection accuracy.

After it maps out all the sensitive files in a company’s cloud environments, the startup’s platform searches for records that may be stored in an insecure manner. Cyera says its AI algorithms are designed to detect a wide range of cybersecurity risks.

The platform can spot the most severe types of security misconfigurations, such as cloud storage environments that are accessible without a password. It can also determine if more users have access to a record than strictly necessary. To reduce the risk posed by hacking, companies minimize the number of employee accounts with the ability to download sensitive data. 

Cyera says its platform spots more subtle security risks as well.

Software teams often create replicas of production applications for code testing purposes. Typically, a replica is not meant to contain any sensitive records from the original application. In practice, however, such records can sometimes be accidentally copied over.

Cyera can detect when records are stored in systems where they’re not meant to be kept. Moreover, the platform spots datasets that might be stored in accordance with a company’s cybersecurity rules but don’t meet regulatory requirements. For regulatory compliance reasons, some types of data must be stored in the jurisdictions where they were produced.

After it maps out potential data risks, it recommends ways to fix them. The platform also is aimed at automating several of the other tasks involved in remediating cybersecurity issues. 

“Cyera is building the data security platform for the cloud era,” co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Yotam Segev (pictured, left, with co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Tamar Bar-Ilan) wrote in a blog post today. “We moved away from pattern matching and implemented AI-based classification. We are replacing legacy on-prem deployments, agents, and connectors with a cloud-native architecture.”

The company says its platform has gained “significant traction” among S&P 500 enterprises over the past year. In the same time frame, it claims to have increased its revenue by a factor of eight, though it didn’t reveal more specifics.

Cyera will use its newly closed funding round to hire more employees. Additionally, it intends to speed up product development initiatives. 

Photo: Cyera