Sentra raises $30 million to securely streamline data in public cloud

Protecting data in the cloud is the core challenge of modern enterprise security. After all, organizations need the ability to prevent unauthorized users from accessing data as it moves across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This can be a challenge in the public cloud especially when there is a lack of visibility about what data is being used where.

This is a challenge that cloud data security supplier Sentra aims to solve. The company announced today that it has raised $30 million as part of a Series A funding round led by Standard Investments. It provides organizations with a solution to discover and scan cloud data storage in the public cloud and generate alerts if PII is exposed.

It’s an approach that gives organizations a way to improve their data security posture in the cloud by reducing the surface area for data attacks and the risk of data theft or exfiltration.

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Data security as essential to usability

Enforcing data protection in the cloud has become an ongoing battle for organizations, with Research which shows that 53% of IT professionals say compliance in the cloud has become too difficult.

Not only do these compliance challenges increase risk for organizations, they also discourage decision makers from extracting insights from their data or open the door to legal and financial liabilities. Therefore, implementing cloud-friendly data protection controls is critical to ensure data usability.

“Today, most organizations view security as a hindrance to business success, not a facilitator. Sentra was founded because we believe that this way of thinking is wrong as data security should be the most important factor for the company,” said Yoav Regev, CEO and co-founder of Sentra. “If data is used efficiently and properly protected, organizations can move faster in this digital age and ensure business continuity.”

“The promises of flexibility make the cloud one of the most amazing technological advances in recent history. However, this flexibility means that organizations can easily lose control and visibility of their most sensitive information. Our solution solves this problem by ensuring organizations prioritize protecting this sensitive information while keeping pace with business demand and the speed of data in the cloud,” said Regev.

A look at the DSPM market

Sentra falls under the category of the data security posture management (DSPM) market, as outlined by Gartner in the Data security hype cycle 2022. From a Gartner perspective, DSPM solutions provide insight into where sensitive data resides, who has access to it, and the security status of the data store or application.

One of Sentra’s competitors does shotwhich provides a cloud data protection platform (CDPP) designed to simplify tokenization and data encryption to help organizations maintain data privacy with the support of access control and field-level encryption to protect data end-to-end.

Baffle recently announced that he has raised $20 million in Series B financing in August 2021.

Another competitor is Count securityproviding security teams with a platform that can discover and classify cloud data assets across multiple clouds while providing real-time data detection and response to generated alerts and automated responses to threats.

Dig Security recently raised $34 million as part of a Series A funding round September 2022.

“Many players in the DSPM space are startups that have only been around for one to two years. That said, the main differentiator that separates us from the companies is our focused data-centric approach. Our vision is to secure and integrate the data lifecycle into a customer’s environment, giving them a holistic view rather than an isolated one,” said Regev.