Most promising Israeli startups: 5 cyber companies to watch in 2024

This month Calcalist published its annual list of the Top 50 Most Promising Israeli Startups. One sector that continued to thrive was Cyber. As one of the leading sectors in Israel, Cybersecurity continued to have a leading presence on our list for its impact on the country and the world.

Oasis Security

Sector: Cyber | Established: 2022 | Founders: Danny Brickman and Amit Zimerman | Employees: 50 in Israel and the United States | Funding: $75 million from Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Accel, and Maple Capital

Following their departure from the technology unit of the intelligence corps, Brickman and Zimerman aimed to establish a cybersecurity startup, albeit unsure of which niche to pursue. While eyeing the identity management market, they found it seemingly saturated. A chance mention in a presentation slide, highlighting non-human identity management, sparked a revelation, propelling Oasis to pioneer this new subcategory.

Non-human identities encompass all passwords, keys, licenses, and tokens within an organization, surpassing human identities in quantity. The initial challenge lies in mapping these identities, often overlooked by cybersecurity managers, leaving systems vulnerable. For instance, departing employees often leave behind unused passwords and keys, posing security risks.

Astrix Security

Sector: Cyber | Established: 2021 | Founders: Alon Jackson and Ido Gour | Employees: 60 in Israel and the USA | Funding: $40 million from CRV, Bessemer Venture Partners, F2 Venture Capital, and Venrock

Astrix's security solution focuses on securing application connections, as opposed to existing solutions that focus on user connections. The platform provides organizations operating in the cloud with full transparency of all internal and third-party applications connected to organizational systems, through non-human connections like APIs and OAuth, and the level of access granted to each of them. It constantly analyzes the behavior of these connections to identify abnormalities that may indicate security breaches and vulnerabilities, identifying and automatically fixing unnecessary and exaggerated permissions, as well as abnormal and malicious behavior.

Backslash

Sector: Cybersecurity | Established: 2022 | Founders: Shahar Man and Yossi Pik | Employees: 21 mostly in Israel | Funding: $8 million from StageOne Ventures, First Rays, D.E Shaw, Shlomo Kramer, Yevgeny Dibrov, and Nadir Izrael

Backslash, which has been causing quite a stir in the cyber sector, seeks to solve the problem that Man and Pik themselves experienced as developers: identifying security weaknesses in the development stage of applications. Although this may not seem like a new area, like many cases in cybersecurity, existing solutions often identify problems but developers don't know how to address them, so they simply ignore them and continue working. Backslash's software identifies which weaknesses are indeed critical and which can be ignored.

Zenity

Sector: Cybersecurity | Established: 2021 | Founders: Ben Kliger and Michael Bargury | Employees: 11-50 | Funding: $21 million from Intel, Upwest, Vertex, Gefen, and B5

The Zenity platform allows organizations leveraging low-code/no-code platforms to promote development in a secure and compliant way while mitigating the risks. Zenity provides security teams with continuous visibility and risk assessment across all applications, automations, workflows, and connections built across different low-code/no-code platforms, while giving them the ability to set automated guardrails and risk mitigation through policies, playbooks, and customizations.

OneLayer

Sector: Cybersecurity | Established: 2021 | Founders: Dave Mor and Or Turgeman | Employees: 51-200 | Funding: $14.5 million from Grove Ventures, Viola, and KDT

Recently, hospitals and enterprises have built private cellular networks that employ LTE/5G infrastructure. However, cellular networks require a new security solution that can map connected devices from cellular protocols to the IP-based world. With OneLayer, businesses can ensure secure and rule-based communication across cellular and IP networks as well as implement protections such as firewalls or network access control (NAC). The hospitals will gain full visibility of cellularly connected devices such as doctor carts, beds, and medical devices and identify anomalies and protect from threats.

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