BigID Inc., a startup that helps enterprises ensure their data is stored securely, has raised $60 million in fresh funding at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.

The company detailed in its announcement of the round on Monday that Riverwood Capital was the lead investor. Silver Lake Waterman and Advent chipped in as well.

“The exponential growth of generative AI is driving new cybersecurity needs, and the BigID team has built a leading data-centric security platform that sits at the core of enterprises to help protect their most critical data,” said Silver Lake Waterman Managing Director Shawn O’Neill.

The large number of business records in a typical enterprise’s systems makes it difficult to keep track of each file’s data protection settings. As a result, it can be challenging to identify records that are stored in an insecure manner. New York-based BigID has built a cloud platform that can automatically map out the files in a company’s network, identify if they contain sensitive data and find cybersecurity issues.

The more copies there are of a business record, the more opportunities hackers have to try and access its contents. BigID says its platform can help administrators identify unnecessary data copies and delete them. Additionally, the software spots files that are accessible to more users than strictly necessary.

BigID’s platform can find cybersecurity issues that affect records a company stores in the cloud. The software also scans records kept in other environments, such as code repositories and on-premises mainframes. A dashboard displays a list of data assets that are stored insecurely, the severity of the issue and ways the problem can be addressed.

It also allows companies to define rules for regulating how their sensitive records should be managed. An administrator could, for example, specify that customer purchase logs must be automatically deleted two years after their creation. It’s also possible to create rules that encrypt files and perform masking, or the task of replacing sensitive information in a document with random values to reduce the associated cybersecurity risk.

Decreasing the likelihood of data breaches is not the only use case to which BigID’s platform can be applied. According to the company, its platform also lends itself to cloud migrations. The information the software provides about the whereabouts of a company’s business records and the manner in which they’re stored can make it easier for administrators to move those files to a new off-premises environment.

Regulatory compliance is another focus for BigID. Some privacy regulations require companies to disclose what information they keep on file about customers, as well as delete that information upon request. BigID provides tools that promise to automate much of the manual work involved in processing privacy requests.

The company also disclosed that its platform is generating nearly $100 million in annual recurring revenue. BigID said the proceeds from the round will go toward “organic and inorganic” growth initiatives. Those initiatives are set to focus on the cybersecurity and regulatory compliance markets. 

Image: BigID