AI-Powered Data Protection Firm Gets $12M in Funding

Dathena, a Singapore-based company that uses AI techniques to detect and secure its clients’ sensitive data, has closed a $12 million Series A round, the company announced yesterday.

Dathena’s roots stretch back to 2011, when HSBC’s Christopher Muffat led the investigation of Swiss Leaks, the massive theft of sensitive data that included over 100,000 names of HSBC clients suspected of being involved in tax evasion at the bank’s Switzerland-based subsidiary.

Muffat “understood that the root cause behind the crisis was HSBC’s failure to identify what it needed to protect,” according to Dathena’s website. He eventually came to realize that “all organizations systematically fail to quickly and accurately identify and classify their sensitive information, thereby putting at risk their customers, employees, and shareholders,” the website says.

This formed the core idea behind Dathena, which was formed in 2016. The company developed machine learning algorithms that could automate the identification and classification of its clients’ data, whether it sits on-prem or in the cloud.

In addition to mapping out the risks posed by the data – in particular, the personally identifiable information (PII) that is often necessary for a company to store but potentially devastating to lose – Dathena’s software can also protect the data and monitor access, thereby helping the client comply with emerging data regulations

Dathena already has more than 50 clients around the world, and touches 200,000 end users, the company claims. It also has partnerships with PwC, Thales, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, and was a part the French incubator Station F. Now Muffat is ready to take the next step in the company’s growth.

“At Dathena, our mission is to build trust in the digital world, even as companies navigate these challenging times and are inundated by torrents of data from exponentially multiplying sources,” Muffat says in a press release. “This Series A funding round will help us accelerate our product development and go-to-market efforts, giving more companies the chance to benefit from our flexible, cost-efficient, and uncompromising data-security solutions.”

The Series A round led by Jungle Ventures and involved participation from Caphorn and SEEDS Capital, an investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, a government agency. Existing investors Cerracap Ventures and MS&AD Ventures also participated in the round.

The company has US headquarters in New York City.

Related Items:

Data Privacy Day: Putting Good (and Bad) Practices in the Spotlight

8 Best Practices for Approaching Master Data Governance in the Cloud

Exploiting Loopholes in CCPA