How Onyxia uses security AI to help CISOs improve their security posture

Managing cybersecurity risks is challenging, not necessarily because vulnerabilities are hard to find, but because most organizations rely on manual processes to do so. However, security AI has the potential to automatically measure risks in the environment, and provide recommendations on what to address first. 

Security provider Onyxia, which launched today with $5 million in seed funding, demonstrates this approach by enabling organizations to use artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor their security posture in real time. 

As complexity increases in modern networks, AI-driven solutions will become more important for identifying gaps in an enterprise’s defenses, and reduce the chance of threat actors being able to exploit any vulnerabilities. 

Using security AI to mitigate risk 

The key challenge of mitigating cyber-risks is to understand that the level of risk isn’t static, but changes as technology and users in the environment move in and out. 

In environments that aren’t driven by AI, security teams and CISOs can struggle to keep up with the rate the environment changes. At the same time, the pace of work makes it difficult to make accurate judgment calls on which security risks to address first to improve the overall security posture of the organization. 

By using AI, an organization can eliminate this guesswork and start accurately assessing what actions they can take to better secure their environments.

“Helpnet Security reported that out of 3,800 CISOs surveyed, 61% of security teams are understaffed and 69% say that hiring managers don’t accurately understand their company’s cybersecurity hiring needs, adding training and educational responsibilities that most IT teams cannot spare,” said Sivan Tehila, CEO of Onyxia. 

“Currently, security priorities are shifting as 90% of organizations fail to address cybersecurity risks. Onyxia enables CISOs and security teams to gain a holistic view of their entire cybersecurity environment while highlighting the best solutions and strategies to close security gaps, filling in the gaps that they didn’t know existed,” Tehila said. 

Onxyia is well-placed to meet these challenges, given founder Sivan Tehila’s technology pedigree, previously serving as CISO of the research and analysis division and head of information security for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). 

The vendor’s solution uses machine learning (ML) and AI to provide CISOs with custom suggestions on how to improve their organization’s security posture. Recommendations are based on industry-specific needs, special risks and budget, and enable decision-makers to find the most effective way to improve cyber-resilience. 

AI risk management solutions 

According to Tehila, Onxyia is defining a new solution category for security teams and has no direct competitors. 

“Onxyia is a proactive solution that takes internal and macro-environment factors into account. A proactive solution is necessary for security managers to have real-time insight into their cybersecurity postures and implement proactive measures to ensure business continuity. Currently most of these processes are being done manually,” Tehila said. 

Although it’s important to note that Onxyia isn’t the only provider leveraging AI to identify risks in enterprise environments. For instance, Securiti uses AI to automatically map unstructured and structured data records in real time, while providing an overview of risk scores for data risks. Securiti most recently raised $50 million as part of a series B funding round. 

Similarly, OneTrust also uses AI to discover and classify data, identifying at-risk data and enabling the user to monitor it with analytics displays. To date, OneTrust has raised $920 million in funding.