Laminar Doubles Funding for Cloud Data Protection to $67M

Laminar, a public cloud data security provider, announced today that it has raised an additional $30 million, nearly doubling its funding to $67 million. According to Laminar, the funding came at a crucial time for the company as it continues its first-to-market product rollout with the announcement of three new capabilities within its cloud data security platform, as well as the successful completion of its SOC 2 Type II certification, which demonstrates compliance with the leading industry standards for data management, data protection and security. This, the company added, will give it a significant edge in the public cloud data security startup race.

According to Laminar, CISOs and their security teams have demonstrated a strong desire for cloud data security solutions. The company also stated in its press release that it has raised more than $200 million in total from various cloud data security startups, demonstrating the industry’s need for transparency and protection of public cloud data. This is not surprising given the increasing number of cyberattacks in the wake of increasing digitization, which includes the trend towards working from home, the widespread use of BYOD devices and global Internet access.

While these have become the new normal, efforts by organizations to improve their security have increased demand for cloud security solutions to protect against cyberattacks. According to Fior Markets, the global cloud security market is forecast to grow from US$8.33 billion in 2020 to US$36.43 billion in 2028, at a CAGR of 20.25% over the forecast period 2021-2028.

Amit Shaked, CEO and co-founder of Laminar, said that the increasing number of participants in the cloud security space is exciting and will encourage the company to innovate faster and at higher levels. As Shaked puts it, “A rising tide lifts all boats”.

multicloud strategy

Cloud computing platforms and applications have changed the way organizations work and made operations more efficient. In fact, more than 94% of companies are already using the cloud for at least some of their computing infrastructure. Despite the fact that there are other cloud computing platforms, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are said to be the most popular.

Microsoft Azure, formerly Windows Azure, is a cloud computing platform and web portal that allows you to access and manage Microsoft’s cloud services and resources. It is used by businesses to build and extend new applications as well as run current applications in the cloud. AWS, an Amazon subsidiary, helps businesses scale by providing database storage, processing capacity, content delivery, and networking, among other things.

Each of these cloud computing systems has its own specifics. Azure machines are organized into cloud services and respond to the same domain name with different ports, while AWS machines can be reached independently. A virtual network cloud is available on Azure while a virtual private cloud is available on AWS. There are 140 availability zones in Azure while there are 61 in AWS.

As one of the three new features within its cloud data security platform, Laminar said it has become multicloud by adding Microsoft Azure support to its existing support for Amazon AWS. According to a survey, a multicloud strategy is the de facto standard among organizations, with 89% of global cloud decision makers and adopters saying they have one. According to the company’s press release, in the Laminar State of Data Security in Public Clouds survey, 56% of organizations work with two or more cloud providers, demonstrating the importance of consistency across clouds. According to Forbes, this will help companies reduce complexity and risk.

Complete data-centric policies

Rather than dealing with applications, servers, or networks, a data-centric approach to security combines novel hardware and software to view data as an enduring source of value. It protects data by automatically monitoring data stores, especially when a file is uploaded or updated on the network.

Customers are wary of sharing sensitive data with unauthorized internal users, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organizations to move all their data to a 100% cloud-based paradigm. Because of this, they need data-centric cloud security. Only 18% of organizations say they are able to detect unauthorized data sharing situations within minutes. As a result, most companies are concerned about data storage and data leakage.

While most cloud security technologies specify infrastructure-level security policies, Laminar claims to have a full suite of data-centric policies that are automatically implemented as part of its cloud data security platform. These data-centric regulations aim to prevent sensitive data breaches or leaks, regardless of the cloud architecture that hosts them, according to the company. Nowi Kallen, Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures, said that Laminar is rapidly evolving to offer excellent data security health monitoring and cloud DLP solutions.

Autonomous detection of shadow data

Another new feature of Laminar’s cloud data security technology is the ability to discover and classify data in self-hosted embedded databases. Data that is not tracked by IT but may contain sensitive information is referred to as “shadow data”. This category includes databases embedded in cloud computing instances (AWS EC2s or Azure VMs). When developers iterate quickly, they create embedded, hidden assets that are often unprotected — and therefore vulnerable to threat actors. Although the existence of shadow data is not always intentional, it is a major challenge for organizations. Multicloud environments are notoriously difficult to track, and lack of visibility invites shadow data to build up.

As decentralized workload-based data stores are a major contributor to data proliferation, the rise of highly distributed cloud-native systems based on containers, microservices, and serverless capabilities has brought the shadow data issue to the fore. Administrators who are unaware of the situation or policy risk are held liable for data leakage by retaining data that should be discarded, or compliance violations by missing data that should be retained.

Laminar claims to be the first company to offer self-discovery of these assets, regardless of their location or credentials. This, the company added, involves asynchronously mapping and classifying data stored in such assets. According to Yaniv Toledano, global CISO at fintech provider Pagaya, companies need a consolidated view of their sensitive data in the cloud and a system that monitors and alerts them. He said this allows data security to drive a “detect, control and verify” approach with application development and data science teams, allowing them to move safely at cloud speed.

Tiger Global Management and Salesforce Ventures are participating in the additional funding.