Cloud security is broken. Solutions today are complex, fragmented, and generate too many alerts for security teams. After years in the security industry, first as co-founders of Adallom and later as leaders of Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group, this foundational problem is one that we have seen arise again and again. Having worked together for more than 15 years leading innovations in cloud security, myself, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica and Roy Reznik, decided it’s time to fix it and build a company that can make a real difference — build a cloud security solution that delivers total visibility and lets security teams focus on the real risks.
Our investors
Today, we’re announcing a milestone in that journey: a $100M Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Cyberstarts. In a short 9 months we’ve gone from our first line of code, to landing Fortune 100 customers; and this investment is another clear sign of confidence in our progress and the unique market opportunity we have to change how cloud security is done. We’re excited that Shardul Shah, Partner at Index Ventures, Doug Leone, Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital, Jeff Horing, Managing Director at Insight Partners, and Gili Raanan of Cyberstarts will be joining the Wiz team as board members. We’ve previously had the privilege to work with Doug, Shardul, and Gili at Adallom, our first startup, and we’re excited about the opportunity to rejoin forces and take Wiz even further.
Taking on an industry problem
The cloud is the best tool that’s ever been created for engineering teams and businesses are moving faster than ever. However, it creates an entirely new level of complexity for security teams. Most critically, the cloud has created a knowledge and visibility gap within organizations. Security teams need to understand the business in order to protect it, but they are faced with a mashup of solutions that produce too much noise. There is an opportunity to restart: to give security the independence it needs to enable the business so it can innovate, to stop relying on the insufficient cloud security and configuration scanners that exist today, and to address the problem from a different angle.
With today’s announcement, Wiz is emerging from stealth with a holistic cloud security solution that takes an entirely new approach. Its unique architecture allows for seamless scanning of the entire cloud environment across all compute types and cloud services for vulnerabilities, configuration, network, and identity issues without agents or sidecars. The solution delivers 360 degrees of visibility for cloud security teams by highlighting the critical risks in cloud environments across all risk pillars, and with the goal to empower security teams to know their clouds better than the developer teams. It’s time to stop stitching tools together and do cloud security the right way. It’s an approach that our early customers — Fortune 100 companies and cloud-born startups alike — are excited about, because it addresses key pain points they haven’t been able to solve with other solutions.
Our team
There is a lot of noise in the cybersecurity market today. Why should you place trust in Wiz? Startup success starts with the right team — at Wiz we have assembled an amazing team of talented people and have founders who have a track record of over 15 years together. We know what it takes to build, iterate and scale: From our first cybersecurity startup Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft after only 2.5 years, to growing Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group into a leading R&D organization. We’re a team that understands the challenges of startups. We have deep knowledge of cloud security, paired with valuable behind-the-scenes experience at a leading cloud provider. And for the last decade, we have been embedded in the shoes of global enterprise organizations — speaking daily to CISOs and security leaders. Our knowledge of the cybersecurity industry, combined with our unique experience across startups and enterprises, sets Wiz up to lead a new generation of cloud security solutions and become a trusted partner in the industry.
What lies ahead
Closing out 2020, we have the right team, the right investment partners, and the right visionary customers working with us on solving a major problem that impacts all enterprises. With the Series A investment helping to fuel our growth in 2021, we plan to scale our product, our customer base, and our team, to take on incumbent solutions with our new approach to cloud security.
We’ll have more details to share about our product and why our early customers love it in the months ahead. Join us on our journey to redefine cloud security.
