Cynomi nabs $37M for its AI-powered vCISO platform – News

Cynomi Ltd., a startup that uses artificial intelligence to improve companies’ cybersecurity posture, has raised $37 million in funding to grow its market presence. 

The Series B round was announced today. Lead investors Insight Partners and Entrée Capital were joined by existing backers Flint Capital, S16VC and Canaan. The latter firm led Cynomi’s previous $20 million raise last April.

Israel-based Cynomi provides what it describes as a vCISO platform. A CISO, or chief information security officer, is a company’s top cybersecurity executive. The term vCISO, in turn, refers to a type of consulting service that’s provided by senior cybersecurity professionals to help enterprises lower the risk of breaches.

Cynomi’s platform makes it easier for companies to provide vCISO services. The software is geared mainly toward managed services providers and managed security service providers. Following its previous funding round last year, Cynomi disclosed that more than 100 such companies have adopted its platform.

A service provider with a vCISO offering can use Cynomi to automatically map out vulnerabilities in customers’ networks. The platform finds weak points using multiple methods. It generates questionnaires that customers of a vCISO service can fill to provide an overview of their cybersecurity posture. For added measure, Cynomi scans those customers’ websites and other public-facing technology assets to find security issues.

After mapping out the vulnerabilities in a company’s network, the platform generates recommendations on how to fix them. It groups those suggestions by category to ease remediation. One set of tips might focus on improving a company’s access controls, while another may provide pointers on reducing the risk of phishing.

Cynomi ranks the cybersecurity suggestions it generates by urgency to help customers prioritize their work. A recommendation to fix a vulnerable production database, for example, might be placed above an alert about a development environment. It says that its AI generates a natural language explanation of each suggestion to ease administrations’ work.

The company positions its software as a way for service providers to more easily launch vCISO offerings. Service providers that already offer such an offering, meanwhile, can use Cynomi to boost operational efficiency. The platform’s automation features promise to speed up some of the tasks involved in protecting a client organization’s network.  

There’s also a reporting toolkit that a service provider can use to update customers about their cybersecurity posture. According to Cynomi, its reporting features have other applications as well. The data that the platform collects about a company’s cybersecurity posture can be used to negotiate more favorite rates with cyber insurance providers.

The company says its latest funding round follows 12 months in which its annual recurring revenue tripled. The year before that, the company’s sales more than quadrupled.

It will use the new capital to grow its U.S. sales team and establish a bigger presence in Europe. Additionally, it plans to roll out new cybersecurity features powered by AI agents.

Image: Cynomi