New York and Tel Aviv, Israel, November 4th / PRNewswire / -- Sentra, a company specializing in proxy-based data security, announced today that Capital One Ventures has led a $150 million strategic investment in the company. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Standard Investments, Munich Re Ventures, and Key1 Capital also participated in this round of financing. As part of the investment, a representative from Capital One will join the board of directors of Sentra.

This investment comes shortly after the company’s year-over-year growth exceeded 300% in the past year. Sentra stated that as businesses shift to using their platform to understand their own data, control which entities – including humans and AI – have access to this data, and ensure that the data remains governed and protected when used by AI and autonomous agents, the company’s business continues to grow.

"Your data has welcomed a new type of consumer"

Data security was initially designed for people, but three forces have simultaneously changed this:

• Enterprises hope to use AI immediately. The rollout of co-pilot, assistant, and cloud AI services has outpaced the development of governance systems, forcing security teams to balance business speed, data visibility, and governance requirements.
• Data explosion. Sensitive data is scattered across cloud, SaaS, and local environments, exceeding the coverage capabilities of traditional visibility tools. This also makes it more fragmented as to where sensitive records are stored, and who and what can access this data. Without continuous governance, issues such as excessive permission granting and excessive exposure of sensitive information can quickly arise.
• AI proxies are expanding exponentially. Each proxy represents a new identity, accessing data at machine speed without any central control mechanism. Large organizations that only operated a few proxies a few years ago are expected to run exponentially more proxies in the coming years, yet only a handful of institutions have indicated that they have established sufficient governance mechanisms to control the content that these proxies can access.

Sentra, co-founder and CEO, Yoav Regev, stated: "Proxy agents are now the busiest consumers of corporate data, with many agents having access to data that has not been fully categorized or governed. Traditional boundary controls are not designed for agents that move at machine speed. What companies can do is to ensure that the data these agents have access to is already protected. By protecting the data where it resides and controlling which identities—whether human or AI—can access this data, companies can deploy AI more quickly while still maintaining control. This investment will help us bring agent-based data security to every company that deploys such agents."

Proxy-based data security starts with static data.

Sentra does not attempt to perform checks with each proxy request; instead, it protects static data, which refers to where the data is stored. This protection covers cloud environments, SaaS, data warehouses, local file sharing, as well as the knowledge bases relied upon by AI. By managing in advance the data on which proxies depend and the access permissions, Sentra maintains continuous protection beyond traditional boundaries.

• In advance: Sentra will try to minimize the exposure. It will identify and categorize sensitive data in various environments, map out the content that humans, service accounts, and AI proxies have access to, including inherited access permissions. It will implement the principle of least privilege for non-human identities and remove redundant, outdated, and high-risk data that proxies should not come into contact with.
• In the process: Sentra helps to quickly contain proxy risks. Detection with data awareness capability will mark abnormal access to sensitive data, automated repairs will revoke access permissions and remove high-risk sharing, while high-risk issues will be handed over to the data owners and existing workflows.
• Afterward: Sentra will show what the proxy could have accessed and provide a business context for the relevant datasets, helping security, legal, and compliance teams to respond quickly and with solid evidence to support their decisions.

Sentra What will be invested in next?

This financing will accelerate the innovation of Sentra in proxy-based data security, including: providing broader visibility to proxies, "passengers," models, and the sensitive data they come into contact with; continuously implementing the principle of least privilege for both human and non-human entities; protecting static data before it is accessed by proxies; and quickly mitigating risks in the event of abnormal behavior by proxies.

Sentra will also expand market promotion by increasing sales and channel initiatives, enhancing brand and marketing investments, as well as entering new geographical markets.

Why do enterprises choose Sentra

AI Agents now process corporate data at machine speed, so the security system must understand both the data itself and who or what has access to it. Sentra unifies these two aspects in a unique way, making it particularly suitable for large and complex environments that are difficult to cover with other tools. It can identify and classify sensitive data in a manner tailored to each business, while also mapping out which identities—including human, non-human identities, and AI agents—have access to what sensitive data. This enables companies to manage who can access what and to fix high-risk accesses before agents or attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities.

Sentra completes these tasks without moving any data. It performs analysis right where the data is located, running entirely within the customer's own environment, ensuring that sensitive information never leaves that environment. Alternative approaches that involve copying customer data to its own environment create a pool of data that requires additional protection and pose risks related to retention, data residency, and compliance for regulated industries. By keeping the data in place, Sentra is able to scale efficiently across clouds, SaaS, data warehouses, and local systems, providing broader coverage in a more cost-effective manner. Customers consistently rate Sentra as one of the top products in the field of data security posture management on independent peer review platforms.

Lyft Chief Information Security Officer Chaim Sanders stated that Lyft has adopted Sentra as a data security solution to support the company's growth. Sanders said: "The team at Lyft hopes to move forward quickly with the help of AI, but before enabling these proxies, we need to know what data they can access. Sentra allows us to get this answer across the entire environment, so the security team is helping to facilitate the deployment rather than slowing it down."

About Sentra

Sentra is an agency-based data security company. Its platform integrates data security posture management (DSPM), data detection and response (DDR), data access governance (DAG), and data leakage prevention (DLP) to protect static data, that is, where the data is stored. It also provides enterprises with continuous visibility and control over which entities – including humans and AI – can access their data. This helps companies to quickly adopt AI and maintain governance and compliance. Sentra was founded in 2021 by Yoav Regev, Asaf Kochan, Ron Reiter, and Yair Cohen, with headquarters located in New York and Tel Aviv. For more information, please visit sentra.io.

Consultant

H-F and Co, Law Offices serve as the legal counsel for Sentra. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz serve as the legal counsel for Capital One Ventures.