Many global leaders from the cybersecurity sector got behind Israeli startup Grip Security; participating in a $6 million Seed funding round closed by Grip. The company’s technology detects and maps nearly 100% of SaaS applications used by enterprises; helping companies manage and monitor that employees are accessing these SaaS apps in a secure way.

SaaS app security layer

SaaS products have seen enterprise adoption grow significantly over the last few years. In 2020, enterprises used on average almost 300 different SaaS applications, with COVID only increasing SaaS demand and dependence. Armed with a deep understanding of the problems enterprises face securing SaaS today, Grip Security has created a different approach to SaaS security, providing organizations with full visibility into their entire SaaS portfolio, known and unknown, and enforceable endpoint-centric access and data governance capabilities regardless of device or location.

CEO and co-founder Lior Yaari told us that “the system adds a layer of protection to the different SaaS application access points. This enables companies to better manage authorizations and track data moving between devices and applications. The company’s technology aims to support the changes in work, like with hybrid or BYOD (bring your own device) situations.”

According to Yaar, the current offering of solutions was built at the beginning of last decade, limiting their ability to fully cover a modern day company’s extensive SaaS network, and leaving them blind to a high number of unmonitored access points.”

Grip Security was founded in 2020 by CEO Lior Yaari, a former CTO of cyber focused YL Ventures; CTO Idan Fast, and VP R&D Alon Shenkler. The Seed round was led by YL Ventures, and saw participation from George Kurtz, CEO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, and other execs from the cyber realm, including Andy Ellis, former CSO at Akamai and current Operating Partner at YL Ventures; Michael Sutton, previously CISO at Zscaler;  Sounil Yu, former Chief Security Scientist at Bank of America; Omkhar Arasaratnam, former executive director, Data Protection Engineering at JPMorgan Chase; Sameer Sait, CISO at Amazon (Whole Foods); Adi Sharabani, former SVP & GM, Endpoint Solutions at Symantec; and additional industry leaders.