Top cybersecurity veterans unite to build a highly AI-aware platform to safeguard user activity across thousands of AI applications and tools

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aurascape, an innovative provider of AI-native security, today announced its launch from one year of stealth operations with $50M in funding. Lead investors include Mayfield Fund and Menlo Ventures, along with a strategic set of investors such as Celesta Capital, security industry leaders, including former Palo Alto Networks CEO Mark McLaughlin, former Symantec CEO Greg Clark, the Chairman of Walden International Lip-Bu Tan, and former Zscaler Chief Strategy Officer Manoj Apte. Aurascape’s introduction to the market arrives amid strong company growth and the general availability of its AI Activity Control platform.

“AI is here to stay, and enterprises must implement strategies to monitor and protect AI use,” said Moinul Khan, Co-Founder and CEO of Aurascape. “Traditional security offerings were not designed for the ways AI applications operate, thus we see an unsolved need for comprehensive AI security today. This is why we tapped the brightest minds in the industry to re-imagine security for the AI era.”

AI Adoption – and Risks – Continue to Grow

With compelling incentives – time savings, creativity boosts, and productivity gains – AI adoption in today’s workplaces continues to explode. However, many leaders worry about full-scale AI adoption, citing concerns over data security, privacy, and brand-new AI-driven threats. Due to these concerns, over a quarter of organizations report attempting to block AI access. Yet executives underestimate by up to 300% the actual extent of employees’ use of third-party, and often unsanctioned, AI apps, creating hidden risks known as “shadow AI.” Additionally, one in three employees report paying out-of-pocket for at least one AI app. With AI powering strong productivity boosts, businesses that allow their workers to safely leverage AI tools will gain a competitive advantage over organizations that fail to do so.

Today’s Security Solutions Fall Short

Existing security solutions have yet to solve the need for comprehensive AI protection. Traditional firewalls, proxies, and Secure Service Edge (SSE) solutions cannot pivot fast enough to decipher the dynamic ways AI applications communicate, resulting in lack of visibility into the majority of AI activity. Most new AI security vendors rely on out-of-band deployment methods such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or browser extensions, which miss key network details and cannot always enforce policies in real time. In addition, legacy threat prevention services have failed to stop modern attacks, and traditional DLP solutions are fundamentally broken—flooding teams with thousands of false positives while failing to address real customer challenges.

Taken together, these shortcomings contribute to a growing blind spot filled with uncertain levels of AI-related threats and sensitive data exposure. Organizations need complete visibility for the growing list of AI tools, plus effective security controls to prevent AI-specific threats and keep critical data secure.

The Aurascape Approach

Aurascape enables businesses to innovate fearlessly in the age of AI with a platform engineered for AI interactions. Driven by an AI-native engine, the platform provides unsurpassed breadth and depth of visibility and controls for every AI interaction. Key capabilities of the Aurascape platform include:

• Unsurpassed observability: Visibility, risk analysis, and prompt + response decoding for thousands of AI apps, with rapid identification and incorporation of the newest AI-powered tools for “long-tail” AI coverage.
• AI-native protection: Data security with minimal false positives for AI interactions, and threat prevention for sophisticated AI-driven threats. Aurascape processes and protects multimodal data; whether the data exists as text, code, images, videos, audio, or a wide variety of the other formats AI applications work with.
• Automated policies and remediation: Security policies that evolve to incorporate brand-new AI tools and plug-ins, automating visibility, protection, and dispute resolution to keep security teams effective and end-users productive.

“I’ve seen a lot of AI security startups launch in the last 12–24 months, and the AI-native, prevention-first approach Aurascape takes makes them stand out in a crowded space,” said Richard Stiennon, research analyst at IT-Harvest and author of Security Yearbook 2024. “The team’s pedigree of seasoned founders from major security brands is a clear advantage. I’m excited to see where they go next.”

Aurascape Addresses Key AI Use Cases

The Aurascape platform builds upon an AI-native foundation to safeguard AI activity. With Aurascape, leaders can:

• Gain complete AI visibility and control: Prevent AI-powered threats and protect sensitive data by monitoring interactions with both approved and unknown AI tools.
• Reduce AI-related risk: Uncover shadow AI usage, block unsafe data sharing in prompts and responses, and coach or nudge users towards safer behaviors.
• Protect users and data: Block only risky actions, or entire applications, with context-aware and dynamic policy that adapts based on data type, user permissions, and application risk profile.
• Allow safe copilot deployments: Improve user productivity while addressing governance concerns in AI Copilot deployments. Monitor Copilot activity so these tools only access appropriate data when indexing corporate repositories.

“As Microsoft partner of the year in 2024, WinWire is forward leaning on harnessing AI for productivity,” said Vineet Arora, CTO of WinWire Technologies and an Aurascape customer. “Aurascape provides the visibility and controls we need to ensure safe AI usage. They are responsive to feedback and deliver new features quickly.”

To learn how Aurascape is redefining security for the AI era, visit www.aurascape.ai or visit booth #6571 at RSA Conference in Moscone North, April 28–May 1.

About Aurascape

Established by a world-class team with deep expertise in security, AI, and networking, Aurascape clears the way for companies to maximize the potential of AI while minimizing security risk. The Aurascape platform is built specifically to prevent AI-driven threats, protect users and data, and keep teams productive. Many legacy security protocols just aren’t built to deal with the complexities of AI usage. Aurascape is. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and backed by top-tier investors led by Mayfield Fund, Menlo Ventures, and industry veterans including Mark McLaughlin, former CEO of Palo Alto Networks. For more information, please visit: www.aurascape.ai

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