Cyber-security vendor Versive announced on Aug.22 that it has raised $12.7 million in a new round of funding that will be used to help the company build out its go-to-market and technical efforts. Total funding to date for the company now stands at $54.7 million.
When the company launched in 2012 it was originally known as Context Relevant and re-branded to Versive in May of this year. Along with the rebrand, the company debuted its Versive Security Engine (VSE) providing artificial intelligence (AI) powered user anomaly and threat detection.
“The company was founded on the thesis that machines are faster than human beings and can be smarter too,” Versive CEO Joe Polverari, told eWEEK. “We want to capture that dynamic and make it beneficial in a way that can help transform enterprise businesses.”
Polverari said that for the first three years of the company’s existence, the technology that it built was for very sophisticated customers and wasn’t built or targeted at mainstream enterprise customers. He added that each deployment was somewhat customized, but that has now changed with the Versive Security Engine.
“The core asset that Versive has is an automated data science platform that allows organizations to solve almost any problem,” Polverari said. “More importantly on top of the platform we’ve put in place a methodology for how to solve specific problems.”
The first specific problem that Versive is solving is identifying security incidents inside of a network. Polverari said that the Versive Security Engine helps organizations to understand who is using a network, what they are doing and how to forecast potential risks and data breach incidents.
“We’re looking across the entirely of a company’s internal networks to detect and mitigate advanced adversary campaigns,” Polverari said. “Those adversaries can be external or internal in origin, or even a combination of both.”
The way the Versive Security Engine works is the AI model learns and understand what is normal and what abnormal on a network. The abnormalities that are benign are filtered out and then Versive links together the abnormalities that are suspicious together into something the company calls a Threat Case.
“The Threat Case really is a transparent map that shows an organization how something bad occurred, or is likely to occur,” Polverari said.
The market for AI and machine learning enhanced security analytics and insights is very competitive. One of the core areas is commonly known as User and Entity Behaviror Analytics (UEBA) by industry analysts. Polverari said that in his view many UEBA vendors are good at sending out alerts about potentially suspicious activities. He added the Threat Case model that Versive provides differentiates against other technologies in the market providing more visibility and opportunity to take action.
Looking forward, Polverari said that there are adjacent use-cases in cyber-security beyond what the Versive Security Engine provides today, that his company will be looking at for future product releases. He added that Versive is also likely to build offerings that are outside of cyber-security as well, brining the benefit of AI data intelligence to other areas of enterprise operations.
“So ultimately even though we have the technology to be a great cyber-security company, we have a vision to go more horizontal across the enterprise as well,” Polverari said. “We want organizations to think of Versive as infrastructure that can help to manage their businesses.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.