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VC investing trends in the cybersecurity market suggest a sphere indecline — at least within the context of recent months . Accordingto Crunchbase , cybersecurity quite a little enumeration fell during Q3 to 153 deal from 181 in Q2 . In a more detailed report , Crunchbase suggests that , with Q3 cybersecurity venture funding down 30 % compared to the class - agone period , investment in the category could descend to its lowest level since 2019 .
Some cybersecurity startups are escaping the industry downturn somehow , however — likeOpal Security . Today , Opal , a seller pack an automated attack to identity access direction , announce that it raised $ 22 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures with participation from Greylock and Box Group .
Bringing Opal ’s war chest to $ 32 million , the fresh tranche will be put toward doubling Opal ’s 30 - person team by the end of 2024 , scaling its endeavour client financial support org and ramping up product development , father and CEO Umaimah Khan told TechCrunch in an email interview . The mathematical product ramp - up , she add , will include a novel suite of visual image and AI - power tools designed to remediate identity element and access peril .
Khan founded Opal in 2020 . Prior to it , she studied secret writing at MIT and ferment in defense inquiry as well as at startups , admit Amplitude and Collective Health .
During her stints in the private and public sectors , where Khan was creditworthy for building internal assay-mark and authorization services , especially on the insurance policy layer , Khan said that she commence to notice vernacular issues around visibility and a lack of savvy of exploiter access code behavior .
“ I come across at first hand how lack of unspoiled base and mundane exit like grandiloquent access result in completely evitable cascading failures , ” Khan told TechCrunch in an email interview . “ The realism is that most just - in - class security engineering squad understand this and have built these systems internally to the best of their ability — but it ’s a immense cosmetic surgery to scale and asseverate these systems even for a large enterprise , and unrealistic for modest organisation . ”
To speak what she perceive as a need for a more scalable access and personal identity instrumentation political platform , Khan base Opal , a suite that offers companies a amalgamated panorama and mastery of employee access to interior prick , apps , weapons platform and environment . Using Opal , customers with upwards of yard of employee can create policy work flow to automatize access policy and set approval menstruation for the entree requests that ca n’t be automate .
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Opal does n’t stand alone in the marketplace for access management . Besides officeholder ( e.g. Okta ) , vender includingVeza , SailPoint , Cyber - ArkandSaviyntare among the competition . Some have raised solid venture Das Kapital . But Khan assert that , unlike some of its rivals , Opal has place the base for more analytics and AI lineament aimed at preventing individuality - based threat , which she believes will ultimately attract more companies to Opal ’s solution .
“ Because we ’re a data platform , we have both grainy ground truth understanding of organization insurance policy , drug user and groups in addition to metadata on usage , approvals , demurrer , creation and alteration of policies over time — along with log data from certain end systems , ” Khan said . “ This gives us a unique and plenteous data put to provide baseline on various form of risk - related to access , as well as to identify potentially anomalous doer and systems … We ’ve put a fate of thought into how to build a generalizable [ admittance direction ] layer that ’s both read - and - drop a line , and we prioritise enterprisingness facility from an infrastructure and a feature standpoint . ”
Customers agree , it seems . Opal ’s annual recurring revenue has increase 4x since the company ’s Series A in June 2022 across a customer base of around 40 brands , including Databricks , Scale AI and Figma . Khan would n’t say whether Opal was profitable , however .
“ Our technology addresses the challenge of scale access direction with limited information in complex , endeavor surround — a major pain point for technical determination - makers across industry , ” Khan say . “ Large constitution have fragmented data point and systems . more and more , these organizations require usable , scalable data and workflow operation for identity access management … Our platform very neatly fit that penury , give CISOs and CSOs the tools they ask to view and control their systems . ”
Asked if he was concerned about challenges in cybersecurity VC financing or the broader startup ecosystem , Khan pointed to the new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissionrulethat demand company to more rapidly reveal cybersecurity incidents as well as other , relatedpolicy annunciation as tailwind for Opal .
“ Ongoing challenging securities industry dynamics are squeeze company to become as efficient as possible ; our platform enable increase efficiency for surety , compliance and IT squad , ” Khan said . “ Also , as more company have digitally transformed in the wake of the pandemic , we see a parallel geological fault in the mundanity and scale of cyber breaches . Our chopine is a defense force layer against these breach , and this pail is quite sticky … This latest financial support round will enable us to endure the ongoing market challenges while gift meaningfully in our squad and ware development . ”
