“Stepping out of stealth mode today with a groundbreaking achievement in the realm of cybersecurity, Gutsy has secured an impressive seed funding round of $51 million, one of the largest in the industry. Gutsy’s mission is to redefine security governance through the innovative concept of process mining.
To put Gutsy’s funding accomplishment into context, VentureBeat conducted an analysis using Crunchbase, examining all cybersecurity startups that have received seed funding from January 2019 to the present. Among 2,016 startups, the average seed funding round amounted to $3.1 million, with the highest reaching $181 million. In total, cybersecurity startups have amassed a staggering $4.8 billion in seed funding.
Gutsy’s emergence is a direct response to the pressing demands of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) who are in dire need of enhanced visibility.
The trio of serial entrepreneurs who founded Gutsy consists of CEO Ben Bernstein, VP of R&D Dima Stopel, and CTO John Morello. Notably, these individuals were also integral members of the founding team at Twistlock, a trailblazing cloud-native security company that was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019.
According to Yoav Leitersdorf, Managing Partner of YL Ventures, which led the funding round, “Gutsy’s seed round check was the largest we’ve written, but one of the easiest decisions we’ve made.”
Gutsy’s emergence from stealth comes at a critical juncture, as CISOs are grappling with the challenge of quantifying the value of their investments, optimizing expenditure, and consolidating their technology stacks to achieve heightened visibility.
In a survey conducted by Gutsy on enterprise security governance, it was revealed that 55% of CISOs reported poor operationalization of their security tools, leading to process failures accounting for 38% of security incidents. Additionally, 63% of audit findings were attributed to breakdowns in security processes.
Process mining has a proven track record of assisting senior management and boards in resolving complex issues by streamlining operations within enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and related systems. The process mining market is expected to reach $8.4 billion by 2032, a substantial increase from $1.2 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 21.5%.
How Process Mining Operates:
Gartner defines process mining as a technique designed to discover, monitor, and improve real processes by extracting valuable insights from event logs generated by information systems. This encompasses automated process discovery, conformance checking, social network and organizational analysis, automated construction of simulation models, model extension and repair, case prediction, and history-based recommendations.
Process mining relies on event log data from IT, security, and operations systems to gauge the current performance of processes and pinpoint bottlenecks and obstacles. Data is extracted from systems supporting specific business processes and correlated across all events, enabling the visualization of the entire end-to-end process and its performance levels. Algorithms analyze the causes of bottlenecks and obstacles, offering insights into process improvements.
Compliance and cybersecurity are among the most complex processes within an enterprise, often obscured from IT and security teams due to tool proliferation and conflicting data sources.
The Significance of Process Mining in Cybersecurity:
Gutsy’s beta release, now available, encompasses three modules that cover identity management, incident response, and vulnerability management processes. The platform seamlessly integrates with various tools, including cloud providers, HR systems, vulnerability management tools, ticketing systems, endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms, and more. Gutsy is an agentless, globally available SaaS platform, accessible in any customer-selected region.
What sets Gutsy apart in addressing security governance is the fusion of process mining with concerns that occupy the minds of board members. These concerns include risk management, security governance, and the intricacies of cyber insurance selection.
Co-founder Morello explained, “Fundamentally, what we’re trying to do is give security leaders an ability to look beyond just the settings and detections they’re getting from the tools and to really understand how and why they are getting those things and where the problems are within the processes they have.”
This is the core essence of process mining, making it the go-to technique for troubleshooting process challenges across organizations.
Time-Saving Benefits:
For CISOs, CIOs, and their teams, Gutsy delivers much-needed visibility into workflows and tool integration, revealing hidden gaps that security and IT teams may not be aware of. This is particularly advantageous for teams already stretched thin, tasked with prioritizing cybersecurity and IT tools, eliminating redundant ones, and maximizing return on investment. Gutsy’s process mining workflows automatically identify both redundancies and inefficiencies, streamlining tool usage and enabling organizations to cut down on maintenance and license costs.
Morello noted that Gutsy will offer organizations the ability to automate audits and provide greater visibility, enabling them to “literally see the process map that shows every step between all the different teams and tools and technologies.”