The need for real-time data monitoring: Leading $34M for Dig Security

If someone breaks into your house but your alarm doesn't go off until eight hours later, that's not really "security". Yet this is how most data cybersecurity systems work today. Most security platforms can’t detect an attacker early enough in the kill chain to actually stop them and prevent further damage. Today, a motivated attacker can breach cloud data in less than three minutes!

This whole problem has only gotten worse as the shift from on-prem to the perimeter-less cloud causes data sprawl. Now businesses don't even know where all their data is, and you can't use agents or hardware to intercept all traffic. You need to monitor out-of-band and through APIs, safeguard microservices. Simply put, the old network-centric approaches don't apply.

What we need is real-time security —where the alarm goes off the moment someone breaks in so the cops show up and catch them in the act before they can escape with your stuff.

That's how Dig Security works so it can detect incursions in under a minute. Dig indexes and monitors all your cloud data stores and structures. After identifying and minimizing any static risks, Dig helps companies establish policies for approved data access. That lets businesses rapidly discover anomalous use and respond to shut down access and keep attackers from stealing their sensitive user data, payment information, or intellectual property. Finally, Dig provides audit records so businesses can prove to regulators that they're keeping sensitive data safe.

The need for this modern approach to data is why SignalFire is leading a $34 million Series A for Dig Security. We believe they're the future of data detection and response for the perimeter-less era. In a post-firewall world, Dig can give tech companies, financial institutions, governments, and others the peace of mind that their data is safe. You can read more about Dig in TechCrunch.

In the on-prem era, data security was essentially a highly secure vault. Anyone who wanted access to sensitive data would need to authenticate themselves and customers were able to put in place firewalls and alarm systems since they owned the real estate. But with the move to the public cloud, customers now face a slew of new problems. These include their data being dispersed across many different environments, not having full control or ownership over the cloud they run on, and needing a real-time alarm system that could cover their fragmented data.

Unfortunately, most cloud security vendors today only focus on helping customers locate their sensitive data in the cloud and build weak checkpoints around it. They don’t have visibility into what’s done with the data, so they never detect anomalous use. Dig changes this by not only finding and protecting the data stores but also offering an actual real-time alerting system so customers get notified of anything suspicious.

Building this fundamental overhaul of how we approach security requires deep experience at high stakes. Luckily, CEO Dan Benjamin was previously running security product strategy for the world's biggest enterprise cloud — Microsoft Azure. Before that, he was the CTO of Google Cloud for Startups after serving with the Israeli Defense Force's elite 8200 cybersecurity division. He built the way the world's top businesses and militaries approach cloud security, and now he's bringing that depth of protection to every company through Dig. Meanwhile, our Beacon Talent recruiting engine ranks Dig's engineering team in the 95th percentile of all startups we index.

Unfortunately, customers can't wait and hope for the big enterprise clouds to handle data security properly. In fact, Dan got the idea for Dig after Google Cloud launched an API that let users export their whole production data asset as a CSV…which promptly let a hacker steal everything from one of Google Cloud's top customers. Dan realized the need for a dedicated data security solution outside of the cloud platforms themselves that are too big to care about the problems their updates cause.At SignalFire, we love providing our portfolio companies with help they can measure. That's why founders give us an NPS of 92 when few funds even track that metric. Our go-to-market experts led by ex-Stripe CMO Jim Stoneham are helping Dig reach the customer leads identified by our in-house data science team. Our recruiting leaders are working with Dan to use our Beacon Talent engine to hire the best engineers. And SignalFire's in-house PR expert Josh Constine, a former editor at TechCrunch, advised them on making a big splash with today's funding announcement.

"This is an amazing team of second-time entrepreneurs with the scars from paying their dues in the security industry" says SignalFire advisor and Exabeam security founder Nir Polak. "They not only have the right idea that data is the crown jewel that enterprises are trying to protect. They also know how to execute." Now Dig's focus is making it easier and easier to integrate while expanding into Data Loss Prevention to protect data in motion, at rest, and at its endpoints.

Every technological shift comes with tradeoffs. All the convenience, collaboration, and flexibility of the cloud are accompanied by increased risks from a fragmented attack surface that firewalls can't protect. Dig will let organizations safely seize the cloud’s benefits by providing the real-time vigilance they need to catch crooks red-handed.