The 10 Coolest Cybersecurity Startups At RSA Conference 2022

Wabbi, Abnormal Security and Cyberhaven were among the cybersecurity startups at RSA Conference 2022 that caught CRN’s attention.

A continuous security platform for security governance and vulnerability management, an artificial intelligence-based email security platform and a data detection and response service provider aimed at stopping intellectual property theft were among the cybersecurity startups at RSA Conference 2022 that caught CRN’s attention.

Representatives with Wabbi, Abnormal Security, Cyberhaven and other cybersecurity upstarts attended the conference in-person in San Francisco for the first time in two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Big tech names including IBM, Google and CrowdStrike also exhibited and spoke on panels that touched on cybersecurity best practices, training and regulation.

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What cybersecurity startups exhibited at RSA Conference 2022?

Cybersecurity funding appears to be strong for the long run, even as economists watch for signs of a pending recession from inflation in the United States, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other events worldwide.

Venture capital funding for cybersecurity startups hit nearly $6 billion in the first quarter of 2022, up almost 50 percent from the first quarter of 2021. But first quarter funding was down from the $8.2 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to Crunchbase.

Here are the startups that made an impression on CRN at this year’s RSA Conference.

Wabbi

Wabbi provides a continuous security platform that aims to centralize, automate and orchestrate security governance and vulnerability management.

The Boston-based company promises users tools that can automatically assign security policies based on project attributes and the risk profile for each application, version, environment, and asset. Wabbi can correlate, duplicate, and prioritize vulnerabilities from scanners to failed controls, dismissed policies and misconfigurations, according to the company.

In January, Wabbi announced that it had hired a new chief operating officer, chief revenue officer and chief financial officer to help the company grow.

Founded in 2018, Wabbi has raised more than $1 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Kriptos

Kriptos offers tools for locating and labeling sensitive, unstructured information, including personal information and credit card information.

The Tiburon, Calif.-based company has three artificial intelligence algorithms capable of detecting confidential documents, credit cards and personal data on local drives, servers and the cloud, according to the company.

Earlier this month, Kriptos revealed that it has raised about $4.9 million from investors, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Founded in 2018, Kriptos has raised more than $6 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

StackHawk

In May, StackHawk announced a $20.7 million Series B round of funding, with plans to use the money toward improving its application programming interface (API) security testing offerings.

The company recently announced a partnership with cybersecurity vendor Snyk, providing new integrations between dynamic security testing and static security testing.

Founded in 2019, StackHawk has raised more than $35 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Orca Security

Orca Security isn’t just one of the hottest cybersecurity companies at RSAC this week. It’s one of the hottest tech startups in general.

The Portland, Ore.-based cloud security provider has raised a total of $632 million since its founding in 2019, $550 million of which was raised in Series C funding round last October, when the startup was valued at $2 billion. The company’s Orca Cloud Security Platform identifies, prioritizes, and remediates security risks and compliance issues across Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes, according to the company.

In an email to CRN, Avi Shua, co-founder and CEO of Orca, said he wouldn’t reveal the exact percentage of his firm’s revenues that are generated via the channel. But he said “we do expect the majority of our sales this fiscal year to be jointly with our channel partners.”

He added that the 350-employee Orca Security plans to continue to grow and improve its partner programs during the course of 2022.

CybSafe

CybSafe, a software company using human behavioral and data science to improve security, is another hot startup that has used the RSA conference as an occasion to announce a new funding round.

The London-based company said it has raised $28 million in Series B funding, led by Evolution Equity Partners. The latest round brings its total raised to $40 million since its founding in 2017.

CybSafe isn’t known much within cybersecurity circles in the U.S, having focused most of its sales efforts to date on Europe, the Middle East and other locations around the globe.

But that could change soon, with the 80-employee company currently looking for office space in the U.S. and planning to start up a channel system in North America, Munya Hoto, chief marketing officer for CybSafe, told CRN. The firm currently has channel partners in other parts of the world.

Hoto said CybSafe helps companies with especially sensitive data – such as banks, insurance companies and law firms – prevent unauthorized access to critical information.

Araali Networks

Araali Networks definitely made its presence known at this week’s RSA 2022 conference in San Francisco by being one of the 10 finalists for the “Most Innovative Startup” award. The firm didn’t win the RSA Innovation Sandbox Contest, but it did impress a lot of people attending the event.

Founded in 2018, the Livermore, Calif.-based Araali describes itself as a provider of threat management solutions for cloud-native environments, capable of both detecting and blocking threats. Araali’s further description of its product: “Powered by eBPF, you can enforce explicit policies for ‘who can do what’ in your virtual private cloud, blocking malicious code from establishing a backdoor or accessing your services.”

To date, the company has raised a total of $10 million in funding.

In an interview with CRN, Abhishek Singh, CEO and co-founder of Araali, said his firm’s targeted customers are “born-in-cloud companies” and mostly mid-sized.

Right now, Araali is mostly a direct sales vendor, but Singh said it’s only a matter of time before it turns to the channel for sales. “We’re absolutely eyeing the channel,” he said. “We’re very interested in the channel.”

AppOmni

Talk about being hot. On the opening day of RSAC 2022, AppOmni announced it raised $70 million in Series C funding, led by private equity juggernaut Thoma Bravo. The latest round brought to $123 million the total amount raised by AppOmni since its founding in 2018.

The San Francisco-based AppOmni is a provider of cloud security for SaaS applications – and the company’s founder and CEO, Brendan O’Connor, says that AppOmni is today experiencing “triple-digit growth.” He did not provide a specific revenue figure.

In an interview with CRN, O’Connor said his firm’s ultimate goal is to go public one day. Until then, he anticipates continued “huge growth” due to high demand for SaaS-related cybersecurity in general.

More than 80 percent of AppOmni’s current sales are via the channel – and O’Connor said he wants to see that number grow.

“We’re very channel-centric,” he said. “The channel is our lifeblood.”

DoControl

Fresh off a Series B round of fundraising, DoControl offers an automated data access controls platform for software applications.

The New York-based company raised $30 million in April to scale its data security offerings, launch channel and partnership programs and grow globally. The company raised its $10 million Series A round last year.

In January, DoControl announced its first no-code security workflows, providing actions, triggers, remediation steps and paths in a drag-and-drop canvas for IT and security employees.

Founded in 2020, DoControl has raised more than $43 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase.

Abnormal Security

In May, Abnormal Security closed a $210 million Series C round of financing to improve its artificial intelligence-based platform for email security and grow in Europe and Asia.

The San Francisco-based startup tripled its annual recurring revenue and doubled its employee headcount over the past year, according to Abnormal. It counts among its clients Xerox, Hitachi Vantara and Groupon.

It announced its integrated cloud email security (ICES) platform in October, giving users an email security platform powered by behavioral AI and integrated with Microsoft 365.

Founded in 2018, Abnormal has raised more than $283 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase.

Cyberhaven

Protecting data from prying eyes is Cyberhaven’s specialty – and CEO Howard Ting said it’s exactly what an increasing number of customers want from cybersecurity.

Founded in 2016, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Cyberhaven describes itself as a provider of data detection and response platform. “We’re doing data protection in a whole new way,” Ting told CRN in an interview. “We’re monitoring the data to make sure it’s not being abused by others.”

Investors believe Cyberhaven is indeed producing a superior data-protection product, as evidenced by the more the $53 million investors have committed to the company over the years, $33 million of which was provided last December in a Series B round of funding.

Ting told CRN that two-thirds of Cyberhaven’s revenues currently come from the channel. “And we want to increase that number,” Ting said. “We’re in hyper-growth right now.”