Two Israeli start-ups compete in this field. One of them became a unicorn.

Start-up Noname Security, which deals with API security for large corporations, announced today (Wednesday) that it has raised $ 135 million worth $ 1 billion. This makes Nu Nim, which was established only in early 2020, a unicorn. The total amount of the fundraising is destined to the investment in the company.

Nu Nim was founded by Oz Golan (CEO) and Shai Levy (CTO). Golan and Levy met during their military service in 8200 about a decade ago. After the service, Golan began working for NSO, which is currently making headlines, where he served as director of research and development, while working for companies such as Iron Source and Facebook.

In early 2020, the two approached CyberStarts Fund investor Gili Raanan with the idea of ​​establishing a new cyber company. After the meetings that they organized to refresh with the information security managers in the organizations to know their needs, they decided to focus on the field of API security.

The way systems communicate with each other

APIs allow computer systems to communicate with each other and extract information from each other. For example, a hotel reservation site like Booking implements APIs from various travel providers to know the availability of rooms with them at any given time. In the same way, the reservation can allow external sites, such as car rental companies, to implement its interface, to allow checking the availability of hotel rooms without directly accessing its application.

In several media cases, vulnerabilities were discovered in APIs that led to database breaches. For example, in May, a loophole was discovered in the API of exercise bike and smart running device manufacturer Pluto, of which even US President Joe Biden is one of its customers. Age, gender, place of residence and training history of millions of Pluto subscribers.

A month earlier, in April, a security breach was discovered in the API of a credit data company integrated into the American Student Loans website. The violation allowed the name and address of each citizen to be entered and their credit rating information discovered. Research firm Gartner has estimated that API abuse will become the most popular attack vector for data exposure in web applications by 2022.

Nu Nim currently employs about 200 workers in Israel and the United States, a significant increase compared to the 70 workers it reported in its previous hiring in June. 500, including one of the three largest retailers and one of the three largest companies in largest telecommunications in the country. world, has raised a total of $ 220 million since its inception, including the current round.

Israeli domestic competition

Nu Nim Security is not the only Israeli player in the API world. The oldest startup in this world is Salt Security, which was established in 2016. Salt has raised $ 131 million to date, and the company’s last round was in May. Salt reveals some of its clients, including, for example, communications giant Telefónica. According to the PitchBook database, Salt’s most recent fundraiser was valued at $ 625 million (after money).

“One difference between us and Salt is that we take a proactive approach. We are not content with analyzing the movements of the network and verifying in real time who called the API and if it abused it, but also actively examining the configuration and architecture problems. on the API. We also addressed “The API that is disclosed by the organization itself and also the API that it uses, as opposed to other companies that only deal with what the organization discloses,” says Shai Levy.

Another young Israeli company in the field, which was also founded in early 2020, is Neosec, which was also established by graduates of the 8200 and 81 intelligence units. Neosec became known last September after raising $ 21 million. . Another Israeli connection to the field is Impreva, which was established in Israel and operates two development centers in Israel. In May, Impreva announced the acquisition of US security company API CloudVector for an unknown amount.

The Nu Nim fundraiser was led by Lightspeed and Georgian funds and featured participation from existing investors such as Insight Partners, CyberStarts, Next47, Forgepoint, and The Syndicate Group (TSG).