
“Identity threat detection and response” is a fairly recent term that was introduced by Gartner earlier this year to describe the tools and practices used against attacks that target identity and access management infrastructure and credential misuse.
More sophisticated bad actors resulted in IAM infrastructure becoming a target and credential misuse becoming a primary attack vector. A recent example of an identity-based cyberattack is the Uber breach. The breach allegedly involved a teenager tricking an Uber employee into accepting an MFA prompt that allowed the attacker to register their own device.
Uber isn’t the only example of an identity-based cyberattack in 2022. There’s the Okta breach in January and the Twilio breach in August. So, identity-centric enterprise security platform Oort, knowing breaches with identity access involved are trending, sought out to help companies mitigate risk of identity-based attacks.
The company raised $15 million in Seed and Series A investments to help stop these identity-based cyberattacks through its platform. The funding will also help the identity threat detection and response market grow.
“Oort is on a mission to help our customers adopt an identity-first approach to enterprise security, starting with identity threat detection and response,” said Matt Caulfield, founder and CEO, Oort.
Oort is a turnkey platform that gives CISOs the insights they need to understand and secure their population of employees and contractors against social engineering and insider threats. With Oort, enterprises speed up threat investigations, reduce their identity attack surface, detect risky behavior from third parties and insiders, save money on cyber insurance and SaaS and investigate and remediate threats in platforms like Slack and Teams.
“With the increasing cyber risks to enterprises today, we know that an identity-first solution is critical to every security strategy,” said Shawn Cherian, of EIP, an Oort partner. “Oort’s existing experience in this space, coupled with their first-hand understanding of what CISOs need to secure critical infrastructure, position them well to lead the identity threat detection and response market.
The funding round was co-led by .406 Ventures as well as EIP and included Cisco Investments. They join existing investors that include 645 Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and First Star Ventures.
Edited by
Erik Linask