APIs have revolutionized the game for developers, allowing them to quickly update and add different features to their platforms. It would be hard to find a company that doesn’t use at least one API platform. However, this useful software has its disadvantages too, mainly as an easy target for hackers looking to cause some ruckus through a backdoor, just like what happened to both Facebook and Google, with the latter shutting down Google+ due to an API bug.
Israeli startup, Salt Security offers a cyber-security solution for the network APIs you know you use as well as covering the APIs you had no idea you used. Today. the cyber-security startup announced closing out a Series A funding round, landing a $20 million investment led by Tenaya Capital with existing investors also contributing to the celebration, including S Capital, Marius Nacht, and René Bonvanie - Executive VP of Strategic Accounts at Palo Alto Networks. After almost doubling the company’s last investment round from 2019, currently, the startup’s total investment sum comes out to an impressive $30 million.
Customers are reporting hundreds of undetected attacks per month
You may not know this, but almost every company that uses even the most minimal computing or technological systems probably uses an API. According to Salt, almost 83% of all internet traffic passes through an API at one time or another, so it comes as no surprise that they have become a pretty easy target for hackers lurking in the dark. Salt Security’s algorithm learns the customer’s API inside and out, detects incoming attacks and irregularities in real-time and alerts to them before damage can be done. The Israeli startup claims that the integration of its platform into your organization is a very organic process, where once complete, it can catalog and learn all the organization’s different API-used activities.
While talking with Geektime, CEO Roey Eliyahu explains that over the past year the company has implemented major upgrades to the service: “We launched our new ‘Enterprise Dashboard’ along with numerous new features and capabilities like automatic blocking, further connection of customer’s digital environment, detecting common and new cyber-attacks with immediate reaction, unlike any other product on the market. Additionally, our product received the SOC 2 Type 2 certification as well as other required certifications to prove that it holds up to the strictest security standards.”
Eliyahu also adds that most of their customers that have integrated Salt’s platform report hundreds of unidentified attacks per month.” This is undeniable proof of the scary number of cyber-threats that fall below the radar for most companies.”
Raising coin in the midst of a crisis
Eliyahu praises the investors for having his back throughout the whole process, even though the deal was in constant threat due to the COVID-19 crisis: “Leading investor, Tenaya Capital alongside our existing investor circle not once showed an ounce of doubt or fear, while keeping a ‘business as usual’ mindset, during the process. Tom, our partner from Tenaya, told me that he sees the investment as a long-term strategic move while the economic crisis is nothing but a temporary passing moment. Adding as an anecdote, that they had similarly invested in Palo Alto Networks back in 2008 right before the crash, and they turned out to be one of their more successful companies from the portfolio.”
This year the company, which was founded in 2016 by Roey Eliyahu and COO Michael Nicosia, plans to use its newfound riches to double its 30 employee workforce, which is split between their Tel Aviv and U.S. offices. While also further expanding their impressive customer list: AppsFlyer, City National Bank, Finastra, and Systum.
