Permiso emerges from stealth with $10M to tackle the next wave of cloud security

Permiso, a Palo Alto-based startup that provides cloud identity detection and response for cloud infrastructures, has launched from stealth with $10 million in seed funding.

The company was founded by two former FireEye executives, Paul Nguyen and Jason Martin, and is one of many cloud security startups that have emerged since the start of the Pandemic.

While 18 months late, the detection response product is ready for the next wave of cloud security. The idea was inspired by conversations with Permiso's angel investors, who said that their number one problem in the cloud was identity.

The foundation for how you build detection in the cloud is based on identity.

Permiso gives organizations visibility into their identities in their cloud infrastructure to give real-time insights into who is in the environment and what they are doing. The startup claims that it can help organizations to spot malicious or suspicious behaviors that could indicate compromised credentials, policy violations, or insider threats.

Martin said that they were a little ahead of the market. No one, other than the custom products that cloud-forward companies build for themselves, is focused on anchoring all activity around identity, the resources in that environment, and how they interact.

The startup says that Permiso is key given the skills shortage in the cloud security market. It was like learning a new language when we looked at teams that were transitioning from on-prem to the cloud. It is starting from zero.

We built for 1% of the market for a long time. We are going after the 99%.

Foundation Capital, Work-Bench, 11.2 Capital, Rain Capital were part of the $10 million seed round. It was backed by a number of security industry leaders, including a former VP of Information Security at Netflix, a head of Product Security at Databricks, and a CMO at JupiterOne.

The funds will be used to triple the team and expand the customer base.

Martin said that investors have solved the identity problem at scale in cloud-native problems, but other companies won't get to this point for another year or two.

We are still figuring out the cloud's potential.