Protego raises $2 million in seed round, led by Gula

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Cybersecurity company Protego announced Wednesday it has raised $2 million in seed funding for its serverless security platform.

The company, with offices in Baltimore and Israel, received funding from Gula Tech Adventures, Glilot Capital Partners and security industry investors.

“Protego is the first and only platform of its kind that delivers full life-cycle security to serverless applications from deployment to run-time — that can be up and running in just 20 minutes,” Tsion Gonen, Protego’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “With this investment, Protego will continue to work with customers and partners to broaden our offering and bring the product to market.”

The Protego serverless security technology scans serverless application infrastructure. It uses machine-based analysis and deep learning algorithms to model normal behavior in order to detect threats, anomalies and malicious attacks.

The security system increases security at minimum costs by preventing attacks in real time and providing a “minimum effective dose of protection in the right place,” the company said.

Serverless security become important as more work and functions happen in cloud applications, said Ron Gula of Gula Tech Adventures.

“Serverless offers tremendous improvements in speed, simplicity and cost savings, but it also presents a host of new threats and security challenges that traditional application security cannot handle,” he said in a statement. “Protego offers a security solution designed specifically for serverless in mind, putting it at the forefront of this major technology shift.”

Gula co-founded and served as CEO of Tenable Network Security, which raised $250 million in 2015.

Gula since founded Gula Tech Adventures, a cybersecurity investment fund, with his wife, Cyndi. The company has invested in multiple Maryland cyber firms.

The fund participated in New American Wave Co.’s funding round last month.

Protego also received funding from the Israeli venture fund Glilot Capital Partners.

“As serverless computing upends how information technology is delivered, enterprises will scramble to figure out how to implement proper security,” Arik Kleinstein, Glilot’s co-founder and managing partner, said in a statement. “We are excited to partner with the team at Protego to help them bring a powerful security solution to the serverless space.”

Protego won a startup competition at the Cybertech Tel Aviv 2018 Conference.