Cybersecurity

Attack surface management platform Ionix adds another $15M to its $27M Series A round | TechCrunch

Ionix (formerly Cyberpion) helps enterprises reduce their attack surface by giving them a better view of their overall security posture and software supply chain across on-premises, cloud and third-party platforms and services. The company today announced that it has added $15 million to its previously announced $27 million Series A round.

The new funding comes from new investor Maor Investments, with participation from existing investors Hyperwise Ventures, Team8 and U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). This now brings the company’s total funding to $50.3 million.

Supply chain attacks have become increasingly common, all while enterprises rely on an ever-growing number of third-party services and tools — all of which struggle with the same problem themselves. Ionix promises that its service provides businesses with a single platform to understand and manage their overall attack surface. The key insight here is that a lot of this attack surface lies beyond a company’s firewall. While existing tools may work well to defend the network that is directly under a company’s control, they don’t necessarily help defend against threats beyond that.

Attack surface management, of course, isn’t a new discipline, with both startups and incumbents like IBM and Mandiant offering competing services. Ionix argues that its service provides a far broader perspective than many of its competitors. At the core of all of these tools, after all, is their ability to precisely map the attack surface by creating an inventory of the tools a company’s employees are using (which IT and security teams don’t always know about). Ionix argues that its customers discover 50% more assets than with other tools. Based on this information, a service like Ionix can then help IT and security teams prioritize exploitable risks and improve their security posture.

“Our mission is to give them the widest possible view of their attack surface looking from the outside in, like an attacker would. Then we focus on their critical exposures to help them effectively prioritize,” said Ionix CEO Marc Gaffan. “The strong market uptake we have experienced underscores both the important nature of this problem and the value our solution brings to our customers.”

Current Ionix customers include the likes of Lexmark, Warner Music Group, Infosys and the multinational electric utility E.ON.