Contextual cybersecurity search platform Cyclops announced $6.4 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Merlin Ventures, Insight Partners, Tal Ventures, and toDay Ventures, with participation from CrowdStrike’s strategic investment vehicle, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund. Cybersecurity veterans Mike Fey, CEO of Island.io; Dan Amiga, CTO of Island.io; Ofer Smadari, CEO of Torq; and Eyal Gruner, CEO of Cynet, participated in the round.
Founded by chief executive officer Eran Zilberman, chief technology officer Elay Gueta, and chief product officer Biran Franco, Cyclops offers a user-friendly search engine powered by generative AI to answer critical and timely questions about the state of an organization’s security posture, without the need for forensics or SIEM expertise.
Cyclops CEO Eran Zilberman said, “Today, organizations struggle to find answers to the most complex questions across the tools in their security stack and get simple answers on business impact. With Cyclops, these days are over. Our main purpose is to empower security teams to proactively defend against cyber threats and prioritize addressing critical vulnerabilities with the necessary contextual data. The platform generates simple and clear responses just like Google Search or ChatGPT, providing relevant security information to help security teams make better, faster decisions.”
For over a decade, the industry has seen organizations struggling to understand and manage security data, both on-premises and cloud-based, across dozens of disparate and overlapping security tools – stifling productivity, visibility, and the ability to prioritize security decisions and actions that matter most.
“One of the primary challenges faced by cybersecurity managers is staying abreast of the changes occurring in their work environment on a daily basis,” said Merlin Ventures managing partner Shay Michel. “With the introduction of a new security search engine, they can now obtain clear answers and receive valuable recommendations. This technology has emerged as a top priority for most CISOs today, and we are proud of our investment in a company that we firmly believe will spearhead the market in this domain. Moreover, as a cyber fund, we actively seek out companies that disrupt existing categories, and Cyclops is poised to revolutionize how we approach and combat cyber-attacks.”
The Cyclops platform is built on a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) and powered by generative AI to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience. Security teams can quickly and easily query Cyclops through a natural language search bar to gain meaningful insights about their environment and address vulnerabilities, security incidents, and governance, risk, and compliance scenarios. Cyclops enables security teams to get the most value out of their existing technology stack, improve mean time to detection and response by 80%, and help CISOs more effectively manage their cybersecurity strategy.
“Drawing inspiration from Google’s groundbreaking revolution in contextual search over two decades ago, the Cyclops team is poised to make a similar seismic impact in the cybersecurity realm,” remarked Mike Fey, investor and CEO of Island.io. “In a landscape plagued by alert fatigue and an ever-expanding array of security tools, Cyclops serves as the all-seeing eye, providing security teams with a unified and intuitive solution to tackle their most intricate questions. By harnessing the power of generative AI-driven search, Cyclops paves the way for a new era of data consumption and analysis, empowering security teams to navigate complexities with unprecedented efficiency and foresight.”
Cyclops’ founders have decades of experience building and delivering high-end cybersecurity products in the domains of SIEM, asset management, and XDR, with particular expertise in product development, security strategy, and sales. Cyclops CEO Eran Zilberman’s extensive career has included roles such as regional sales director of RSA and general manager of the cyber security division at We Ankor. Elay Gueta, CTO of Cyclops, most recently served in the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel as an R&D group leader, served in the Israel Defense Forces as a security researcher and software developer and led security research efforts at Cynet Security and Cellebrite. Cyclops CPO Biran Franco previously led product development and management at Axonius, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and SentinelOne, and also served as Company Commanding Officer in the Israel Defense Forces.
“To combat ever-increasing modern, sophisticated cyber attacks, organizations have turned to numerous discrete tools, inadvertently creating one of the most prominent security challenges – security silos,” said Gur Talpaz, vice president of corporate development and ventures at CrowdStrike. “We’re excited to support Cyclops through CrowdStrike’s Falcon Fund because of its innovative approach to enhancing organizational security. Cyclops’ platform enables collaboration across tools and controls, eliminating silos and drastically reducing individual security incidents.”
The funding will help scale the company to meet demands from its growing customer base, hire more developers to continue product innovation and expand capabilities, and fuel its go-to-market strategy. Cyclops is generally available now and already serves existing customers in the fintech, insurance, hi-tech, and manufacturing verticals by significantly improving their efficiency around risk validation, vulnerability prioritization, posture management, and compliance monitoring.
