Amplifier Security announced it emerged from stealth to bridge the divide between the workforce and security with AI copilot and human-in-the-loop automation. The company also raised $3.3 million to address the last-mile security challenge with a self-healing approach that transforms how employees interact with corporate security tools. Cota Capital led this pre-seed funding round with participation from WestWave Capital and Shift Left Ventures. It also included angel investments from renowned entrepreneurs and executives.
Setting up security controls through automation gets pushback from users whose work is disrupted, like when security patch updates force a system reboot during a critical workstream. Triaging security tool alerts means closing the loop with the end user to determine valid against false positives before taking disruptive actions. Security teams try their best to navigate this complex situation, which often leads to a strained relationship with the workforce.
Amplifier Security’s solution extends the value and effectiveness of existing security tools by enabling the entire company to work together towards a much faster response time, dramatically increasing an organization’s security health and culture.
Amplifier offers an engagement layer between existing security tools and the workforce through Ampy. This trusted copilot acts as an AI security assistant that helps employees understand the risk they create for the organization and solves their security issues while balancing their productivity. Ampy engages with employees, guiding them through security protocols based on real-time insights.
This approach speeds up response times and significantly boosts an organization’s security posture by involving employees directly in the security process. Amplifier integrates with and enhances the effectiveness of deployed tools like identity security, MFA, endpoint security, vulnerability scanning and management, SaaS and cloud security, SIEM, and security training, making adaptive human protection a reality for organizations.
Amplifier Security was launched by Shreyas Sadalgi (CEO) and Thomas Donnelly (CTO and President), who both have two decades of experience in enterprise security and automation. Donnelly is a three-time CISO and CIO with over a decade of experience utilizing human-centric approaches and technology that transformed security in organizations.
KEY QUOTES:
“The way we operated our corporate security engineering program closely aligns with the design principles at the core of Amplifier Security’s vision. I’m a firm believer that engaging the workforce for security automation with a productivity platform like Slack is the only modern way to solve today’s dynamic cybersecurity threat landscape.”
- Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack
“There is a massive gap in the market that is preventing security practitioners from being successful. Most security tools aren’t built to engage users, as they’re always meant to work in the background. Amplifier flips the script by engaging employees on behalf of all security tools in a more human-friendly way, where every end-user interaction is a two-way conversation with the right tonality, context, empathy and actionable information based on the security finding and the user role. Our vision is to shift the cybersecurity focus to include both technology and the people who use it, creating a balanced and more secure environment for businesses.”
- Amplifier Security CEO and co-founder, Shreyas Sadalgi
“The lack of human engagement in security automation is a missed opportunity to educate people on the why behind the risk of each security finding. Because of today’s hybrid and dynamic workplaces where everyone is moving fast in the spirit of hyperproductivity, this problem has become harder to solve at scale. After assessing the market for many years, Amplifier has done the best execution we’ve seen from a product and team perspective thus far.”
- Gaurav Manglik, Partner at WestWave Capital
“Security is fundamentally about both people and technology, yet the industry has largely built security tools focused solely on the technology element. Everyone knows that when it comes to cybersecurity in workplaces, engaging humans is the biggest opportunity. Amplifier answers the bell with its unique human-in-the-loop solution. We believe they are uniquely positioned to turn this trend into a movement that forward-thinking CISOs will embrace so that they can more efficiently and effectively manage enterprise security.”
- Aditya Singh, Partner at Cota Capital
“Most organizations haven’t significantly changed their approach to threat management – keeping the old silos between those responsible for security monitoring and those responding to the rest of the employee base. Security teams can no longer operate this way. Security has to be embedded in every function, and that means empowering all employees to participate in security. Even with all the security automations, our employees are the best sensors of the unusual or anomalous at every level of our business. They enable us to quickly get context when we notice suspicious behavior and identify incidents faster based on their proactive observations.”
- Steve Mancini, Head of Security at Guardant Health
“Most often humans in the workforce are not intentionally violating security practices maliciously. Often they’re just trying to be as productive as possible and sometimes the Security and IT operations best practices are perceived to be getting in the way of that. Security teams struggle to solve these last mile problems because of the highly nuanced and manual effort it takes to loop in their workforce to fix tooling related problems. Amplifier is innovating on this hard unsolved problem, by empowering humans to participate and collaborate with security teams to triage and fix issues, all while having great productivity.”
- Shawn Bass, ex-CTO, VMware End User Computing
