The move to the cloud, accelerated by the pandemic, continues unabated. By 2025, Gartner estimates that more than 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30% in 2021. The motivation is convenience partly — cloud platforms can be accessed from anywhere, ideal for the remote or hybrid workforce. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The cloud also widens exposure to the threat of data breaches.
There’s a real anxiety. According to a recent Statista survey, data loss and leakage in the public cloud are among companies’ top concerns when it concerns their tech stack. Meanwhile, a whopping 93% of organizations are worried about human error causing the accidental exposure of their public cloud data.
One of the startups attempting to tackle the cloud’s security challenges is Sentra, which finds data in the cloud, classifies it according to sensitivity, and then offers remediation plans for data security teams. Underlining the enthusiasm for cloud security, Sentra today closed a $30 million Series A round led by Standard Investments with participation from
Munich Re Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures, Xerox Ventures, INT3, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Zeev Ventures — bringing the total raised to $53 million.
CEO and co-founder Yoav Regev says that the new cash will be put toward product development and expanding Sentra’s footprint beyond the U.S., where it’s headquartered.
“The promises of flexibility make the cloud one of the most amazing technological advancements in recent memory. However, this flexibility means that organizations can easily lose control and visibility of their most sensitive information,” Regev told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Our solution solves this problem by ensuring that organizations prioritize the protection of this sensitive information while keeping up with business demand and the speed of data in the cloud.”
After connecting to an organization’s cloud environments, Sentra’s software attempts to find all sensitive data — including personally identifiable information and passwords, and understand who has access to it and how it’s being used. Leveraging algorithms as well as contextual data like access patterns and metadata, Sentra automatically detects when data are duplicated, changed, or moved across regions or networks and kicks off remediation steps if necessary.
