Seal Security, which is developing a platform to easily fix open-source software vulnerabilities, has raised $7.4 million in seed funding, as it establishes operations in New York. Vertex Ventures Israel led the funding round for the startup, which had its origins in Tel Aviv. Also participating were New York-based Crew Capital, PayPal Alumni Fund and Cyber Club London.
Co-founded in 2022 by CEO Itamar Sher, Lev Pachmanov and Alon Navon, Seal Security aims to fix what it considers a broken open-source security program. All three were members of Israel’s Unit 8200 intelligence unit, and have worked at companies such as Cymmetria, Curv and PayPal. Pachmanov is the company’s chief technology officer while Navon serves as chief product officer.
“Fast forward to today, we’ve closed major deals with highly compliant U.S. enterprises, got accepted into important accelerators, and are fast-growing as an exciting new player in the SCA scene,” Sher said, referring to security and compliance. Sher studied physics and computer science in high school, and has since become a cybersecurity expert and researcher.
Wannabe Builder
Sher told TechCrunch a primary motivation to start Seal Security was a desire to go beyond hacking and create something substantial.
“For me, it was really a matter of wanting to be a builder,” Sher said. “I spent some of the time being on the other side: being a researcher, hacking stuff, breaking stuff — which is fun in its own way. But I think one of the things that I cared about — and I really wanted to bring forward — is being more on the builder side.”
Emergence of the Apache Log4j flaw in 2021 was a sort of eye-opener for the security industry. No other vulnerability in recent years had impacted so many organizations and systems as the one in the open-source Java-based logging utility. Tenable called it “the single biggest, most critical vulnerability of the last decade.”
Supply-chain Issues
Open-source software is so widely used that a vulnerability has huge implications for supply-chain security. However, a whole host of reasons and the nature of the open-source ecosystem makes patching hard — and often slow. Seal Security wants to change that.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Law
Nemphos Braue
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Among other things, it aims to automate a lot of the remediation and patch management, and additionally offer “unique, standalone” security patches without requiring R&D. Seal Security develops patches on its own and says it can help security teams achieve over 95% patching compliance for critical and high vulnerabilities. Its program in open beta integrates with existing workflows, such as Snyk and GitHub.
“Open-source components are foundational to software development, and organizations face significant challenges in managing libraries with critical vulnerabilities. These challenges have a significant impact on business outcomes,” Daniel Dines, co-founder and general partner at Crew Capital, told TechCrunch. “Seal Security addresses this market demand with a solution that streamlines security patch management, allowing its customers to effectively eliminate vulnerabilities.”
Seal Security’s customers include a Fortune 100 financial services company, a Nasdaq-listed software firm, a Fedramp-certified cybersecurity vendor, and several small- and medium-sized businesses, according to TechCrunch.
