Zenity – a platform for securing low-code/no-code development – recently announced that it has raised $16.5 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital and joined by existing investors Vertex Ventures and Upwest, and new investors from Gefen Capital and B5. In connection with the latest funding round, Yoni Greifman, Intel Capital Investment Director, will join the board of directors.
While overseeing cloud security initiatives at Microsoft, Zenity Co-Founders Ben Kliger and Michael Bargury saw firsthand the problem organizations were having in governing and securing the scale of citizen-developed apps and automations – specifically with low-code/no-code platforms. And even though low-code/no-code solutions allow organizations to build the tools and services they need to streamline work, automate repetitive tasks and make a more significant impact at scale, it comes with risks. Less technical users are more likely to create apps and automations that are susceptible to data leaks, implicit sharing, identity misuse, and more. Plus, the integration of Generative AI into these platforms increases complications and poses new challenges for security leaders to keep up.
Zenity’s platform empowers organizations leveraging low-code/no-code platforms to unlock and promote development in a secure and compliant way while mitigating the risks. And Zenity provides security teams with continuous visibility and risk assessment across all applications, automations, workflows, and connections built across different low-code/no-code platforms, while giving them the ability to set automated guardrails and risk mitigation through policies, playbooks, and customizations.
This funding round comes as more organizations rely on low-code/no-code development to spur productivity and efficiency, with Gartner noting that they expect low-code/no-code development to be responsible for over 70% of all new applications by 2025. But with enhanced productivity and output comes increased risks for CISOs and Application Security teams.
This funding round will enable Zenity to continue leading this new application security frontier and help organizations promote citizen development responsibly. And it will also accelerate the company’s growth as well as increase hiring across engineering, security, and product teams in Tel Aviv, and the go-to-market team in North America to help drive customer expansion and acquisition.
KEY QUOTES:
“As we grow and announce this exciting round of funding, led by Intel Capital, it bears mentioning how proud we are of our excellent team, and are thankful for the support and trust shown by our customers and partners. Together, we are on this journey to incorporate application security know-how to citizen development. There is universal acknowledgement that security teams are lacking the means to be part of the citizen development story and properly protect their organizations. With this funding round, Zenity will continue to lead this new application security frontier and help organizations push and promote citizen development responsibly.”
– Ben Kliger
“As organizations strive to increase productivity by adopting low-code/no-code and Generative AI tools, everyone is now a developer. However, as business users are empowered to create apps, they circumvent the traditional software development lifecycle, thus making incumbent application security practices obsolete. CISOs and AppSec leaders need to work together with business units to securely unleash professional and citizen developers to build applications that help accomplish work more effectively, but not at security’s expense.”
– Michael Bargury, Zenity’s Co-Founder and CTO, and the leader of the founding member of the OWASP Low-Code/No-Code Top 10
“With this new era of application development, CISOs and CIOs don’t know what their low-code/no-code environments look like. Today more than ever, they need quick solutions that enable and empower their workforce to build applications. With Zenity, IT and information security leaders can give developers the ability to accelerate business while retaining full visibility and control.”
– Sunil Kurkure, Managing Director at Intel Capital
