Cybersecurity has become a hot topic in the tech world. Not only are there a never-ending stream of data breaches, but security companies themselves are also receiving a lot of attention as a result. One of the fastest growing companies, Wiz, was the subject of a $23 billion acquisition bid by Google that has now been withdrawn.
Now, another cybersecurity startup that happens to have close ties to Wiz has just raised a significant amount of funding: Dazz, which focuses on fixing vulnerabilities for companies that use cloud services, has raised $50 million in equity funding. The startup hasn't disclosed its valuation, but sources close to the company say it's worth just under $400 million after the funding round.
Dazz works with large corporations and, although it doesn't release revenue figures, claims its revenue grew by more than 400% last year.
Existing investors Greylock Partners, Cyberstarts, Insight Partners and Index Ventures are said to be collectively “leading” the round. Founded in 2021, DAZZ has raised a total of about $110 million to date.
Dazz is headquartered in Palo Alto, but its roots in Israel run deep: Co-founder and CEO Merav Bahat spent years working for Microsoft in its cloud security business, which grew out of Microsoft's acquisition of Adallom, an earlier startup founded by Wiz's founders.
Before leaving Microsoft in 2020 to found DAZS, Bahat helped grow the company's cloud security division into a $2.5 billion company. The subsidiary is now valued at more than $20 billion.
Bahat learned two very important things during his time at Microsoft.
The first was a close friendship with Adalom and Assaf Rapaport, who later became CEO and co-founder of Wizz. The two are based in New York and Tel Aviv, and Bahat is Rapaport's go-to dog sitter and unofficial second family. When out in public, the two founders even fill in each other's sentences. And when Rapaport was getting ready to start Wizz, Bahat became one of his first investors. (Yes, she would have made a huge profit if the sale to Google had gone through.)
Another thing Bahat gained was a very solid understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in cloud security, and what needs more R&D and attention. Armed with that knowledge, she co-founded Dazz with two other cybersecurity veterans, Tomer Schwartz (CTO) and Yuval Ophir (VP R&D).
Bahat said prospects and customers are all using a variety of cloud security platforms, including Palo Alto Networks, Wizz and CrowdStrike. But across all of them, she said, there remain gaps and opportunities to focus specifically on remediation, the next step after a vulnerability, misconfiguration or breach has been identified and a fix issued.
“we [security teams]”When it comes to vulnerabilities, prioritization and remediation, we're hearing that no one has solved these problems.” One reason for this is that the volume of issues that occur in a typical network makes it a very manual and complicated process, she explained.
“All security tools are focused on visibility and detection, telling you what the problem is, and there are loads of problems,” she said. “Some of the organizations I work with are finding millions of unpatched, unresolved vulnerabilities.” She noted that one client had 1.2 billion vulnerabilities identified within their network.
There are plenty of other companies in the remediation space, including the leading security platforms. Dazz's breakthrough appears to be its technology to detect vulnerabilities across multiple cloud architectures and environments (it calls this “unified” remediation). The company has also created an AI-powered automation layer that helps prioritize issues and identify which vulnerabilities are closer to active work and which are dormant, allowing security teams to organize more efficiently.
Bahat noted that previous remediation efforts have only been able to address about 10% of vulnerabilities (the most severe ones), but Dazz's approach could address around 50% to 80%.
Companies like Wiz are certainly benefiting from the current trend of reducing the number of “one-stop shop” providers from which enterprises source IT. But there's still an argument for having point solutions for certain functions. Dazz and its investors believe remediation is one such area, especially when it comes to a so-called “single pane of glass” that can address all of an enterprise's assets, whether in the cloud or on-premise.