Security Startup Traceable Gets Funding From CISO Group

‘For us, it’s about the guidance we get from the CISOs. None of them have seats on our board. But they are available as advisors. As we build a new product, we can discuss roadmaps or pricing with them, and get their feedback,’ says Jyoti Bansal, Traceable CEO and co-founder.

Security startup Traceable Thursday unveiled a new round of funding that was less about the amount of money invested and more about giving a group of practicing chief information security officers the opportunity to help shape the company’s future.

The new round of funding, worth about $250,000, came from about 30 chief information security officers, or CISOs, that are part of a consortium of over 55 CISOs who through their organization Silicon Valley CISO Investments are looking for ways to back cybersecurity startups, said Jyoti Bansal, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Traceable.

Traceable, which last fall exited stealth mode after developing technology for helping businesses secure APIs and cloud-native applications and receiving a more traditional investment of $20 million, doesn’t really need the $250,000, Bansal told CRN.

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“We’re looking for the insight, marketing insight, or help with our product roadmap,” he said. “The CISOs are from forward-looking companies. We are very excited to have them invest in Traceable.”

Traceable develops an end-to-end application security platform that uses machine learning to analyze data to protect against cyberattacks and provide forensics in large part by focusing on APIs, Bansal said.

“We’re focused on detection and discovery,” he said. “We use machine learning to reduce false positives. With modern applications, 40 percent of a business’ traffic comes via their APIs. Banks, financial services companies, and so on expose their APIs to interface with customers. APIs are becoming the new route to attacks.”

Existing customers include Houwzer, a Philadelphia-based technology developer focused on buying and selling homes; and Marqeta, an Oakland, Calif.-based developer of digital payments technology, Bansal said.

The CISOs in Silicon Valley CISO Investments, or SVCI, decide as individuals whether to invest in a security startup and how much to invest, Bansal said. They then pool their funds into a single investment. Traceable is SVCI’s third or fourth investment, he said.

“For us, it’s about the guidance we get from the CISOs,” he said. “None of them have seats on our board. But they are available as advisors. As we build a new product, we can discuss roadmaps or pricing with them, and get their feedback.”

Among the CISOs who participated in this round of funding are Jonathan Jaffe, SVCI investor and chief information security officer for New York-based insurance company Lemonade; Lakshmi Hanspal, chief security officer at San Francisco-based cloud storage vendor Box; and Craig Rosen, chief security and trust officer at ASAPP, a New York-based AI-based automation technology developer.