Autonomous security solutions startup Horizon3.ai Inc. today announced that it had raised $40 million in new funding to build out its enterprise-wide proactive security platform and expand channel and partner presence.

Founded in 2019 by former Splunk Inc. Chief Technology Officer Snehal Antani and Anthony Pillitiere, former deputy CTO within U.S. Special Operations Command, Horizon3.ai offers automated penetration testing designed to allow companies to see themselves through the eyes of an attacker. Penetration testing, more commonly shortened as pentesting, is the practice of simulating cyberattacks on a system, network or application to identify vulnerabilities before malicious hackers can exploit them.

The company has as its mission to help organizations see their networks through the eyes of the attacker and proactively fix problems that genuinely matter, improve the effectiveness of their security initiatives and ensure that they are prepared to respond to real cyberattacks.

Horizon3.ai’s fully automated NodeZero solution assesses the attack surface of a hybrid cloud – cloud-native, on-premises, edge and the internet of things and does not require agents to be installed or attack scripts to be written or maintained. The solution discovers and fingerprints an attack surface, identifying the ways exploitable vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, harvested credentials and dangerous product defaults can be chained together to facilitate a compromise.

“Every major change to a company’s environment — applying a patch, deploying new applications, or onboarding new employees — means their attack surface has changed,” Bob Cariddi, chief revenue officer at Horizon3.ai, said in a statement. “The pentesting frequency should match this change frequency so that for every ‘Patch Tuesday,’ there’s a ‘Pentest Wednesday.’ This continuous assessment approach needs to become second nature – automated in the same fashion as other business processes.”

The company has seen strong growth in recent times, including three times customer year-over-year growth, though it didn’t provide more specifics. Horizon3.ai customers span 50 industries across 25 countries, including manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, education and local government.

The Series C round was led by Craft Ventures LLC, with Signal Fire LLC also participating. Including the new funding, Horizon3.ai has raised $78.5 million to date.

Horizon3.ai Chief Executive Officer Snehal Antani spoke with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s livestreaming studio, in October, to discuss the company’s global partner program expansion and provide a look into the company’s product acceptance, sales channels and market dynamics:

Image: Horizon3.ai