SentinelOne raises USD 70 million to fight hacks

The funding round was led by new investor Redpoint Ventures with the participation of Sound Ventures (founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary) as well. Existing investors Third Point Ventures, Data Collective, Granite Hill Capital Partners, Westly Group, and SineWave Ventures also participated in the round, bringing the total investment in SentinelOne to more than USD 110 million, to date.

The startup is based in Palo Alto, California and has developed antivirus software that is programmed to be proactive rather than reactive with regard to endpoint security. The startup’s roots in the Israeli security and counter-intelligence community certainly adds to its credibility, according to VentureBeat.

SentinelOne cofounder and chief executive Tomer Weingarten said in an interview with VentureBeat that “Incumbents like Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro have not been able to improve their offering or offer any meaningful protection for their customers against evolving threats”.

Furthermore, he explained that static antiviruses will scan for anomalies that are known and blacklisted. However, once hackers understood this, they began creating variations and alterations that scans would dismiss, as they were not on the blacklist.

The SentinelOne software is able to prevent an attack using a system that detects intrinsic behaviours by looking at the traits of specific files and processes.