Cybersecurity startup OPORA has closed its seed round on $7m, which was led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and a number of angel backers.
With the capital injection, the company is looking to increase its product development, sales and marketing efforts.
In addition to the close of the round, the company has named JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit and JVP principal Julia Kagan to its board of directors.
OPORA leverages behaviour analytics to offer pre-emptive adversary threat protection against persistent, organised and uncontested cyber attacks.
The Adversary Threat Protection platform offers a real-time and continuous view of customers’ cyber adversaries, exposing and monitoring their network of attack infrastructure and giving pre-emptive action to stop attacks.
Its technology sits between the organisation and the adversaries to act as a first line of defence, monitoring activity to better identify and respond to incidents.
OPORA CEO Chris Bell said, “We started OPORA because we realized that to get control over cybersecurity and the largely uncontested adversaries behind the chaos, IT Security teams need a preemptive advantage.
“OPORA customers change the balance of power between them and their adversaries, gaining a pre-emptive advantage that translates into adversary level prevention, containment, and control”.
Israel has established a strong FinTech sector, with the number of investments valued under $1m having dropped by nearly three quarters since 2015. The country is largely dominated by cybersecurity companies, capturing around a fifth of all investment in the sector.
JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit said, “Israel has brought the three big cyber paradigms to the world. The first, firewalls created by Checkpoint Software, the second being Cyberark’s solution, preventing attackers from within, and now the third, OPORA’s technology is stopping criminals on their home turf before they even attack.
“Opora has brought about a new mindset in which cybersecurity is moving from defence to offense. The innovation of the Israeli Security Forces led by Yuval Diskin, Chris Bell, Noam Jolles, and the team has now come together with Israeli Hi-tech innovation and is creating technology that is redefining cybersecurity.”
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