Concentric Inc., a vendor of intelligent AI-based solutions for protecting business-critical data, has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding. Led by Ballistic Ventures, a new VC firm dedicated to advising and funding early-stage cybersecurity startups, this investment targets the $19B market for data security, access governance and loss prevention. Citi Ventures also participated in the round as a strategic investment, as did Core Ventures Group, Engineering Capital, and Clear Ventures.
As a result of the investment, Ballistic Ventures’ Barmak Meftah will join Concentric’s Board of Directors. Recognized globally as one of the most successful business leaders in enterprise software and cybersecurity, Meftah served as the President of AT&T Cybersecurity, a role assumed after the successful acquisition of AlienVault, where he led the company for six years as CEO. Under Meftah’s leadership, AT&T established itself as a cybersecurity leader and one of the world’s top-five largest managed security services providers (MSSPs).
“Data security and access governance – especially for information hidden in unstructured content – is an enormous unaddressed market,” Meftah said. “Concentric has the right technology and team to deliver tremendous customer value and take data security to the next level. With the help of Ballistic’s expertise and our extensive network of security contacts, their growth potential is virtually unlimited.”
Concentric serves organizations awash in business-critical data that they can’t protect. Using the company’s autonomous data security solution, security professionals can discover, evaluate and remediate security issues without resorting to armies of analysts or asking end-users for help.
Automation is an effective cybersecurity strategy: According to the 2021 “Cost of a Data Breach” report from IBM, the cost of a data breach climbs up 10 percent YOY to $4.24M in 2021, with remote work contributing $1M more in average cost per data breach. However, adopting security AI/automation drove breach costs down by 84.4 percent (from an average per-breach cost of $6.71M to $2.90M). Out of the 26 cost factors evaluated in the report, automation drove the biggest savings.
Concentric co-founders Karthik Krishnan (CEO), Madhu Shashanka (Chief Data Scientist), and Shankar Subramaniam (CTO and VP, Engineering) believe in emerging deep-learning technologies are the answer. Their trademarked Semantic Intelligence solution includes patented capabilities such as Risk Distance analysis for autonomous risk assessment and Concentric MIND for an AI-assisted deep learning model and policy management/curation. Customers use Semantic Intelligence to meet regulatory requirements, protect sensitive client information, control internal data flows, and more.
Learn more about Concentric’s solutions here.
