Why we invested in Concentric AI

AI solutions for securing critical data

By Barmak Meftah, Co-founder and General Partner

Cybercriminals don’t usually steal credentials, infiltrate supply chains, or gain behind-the-firewall access for the thrill of it. They’re after data. Securing the data layer has never been more critical. And while infosec professionals have great options for authentication, intrusion detection, and perimeter protection, available data security solutions, unfortunately, aren’t cutting it.

That’s where Concentric comes in. Using advanced AI technologies, Concentric automates and simplifies data security and governance. Their Semantic Intelligence™ solution reduces complexity and cost to deliver effective, continuous protection against data loss and breaches.

Ballistic Ventures is proud to announce our investment in Concentric. Their team of AI experts, data scientists, software builders, and security junkies are solving the industry’s most pressing data security problems. We’ve been watching them with interest over the last year, and we’re excited to now be a part of their journey. Here’s where the company shines:

Begins with data visibility and assessing risk

You can’t secure what you can’t see, and today most enterprises are flying blind. It’s astonishing how often business-critical data gets shared with the wrong people or stored in the wrong location. Admittedly, it’s a challenging problem: a typical organization manages tens of millions of documents, with content too diverse for any single IT analyst to understand and assess.

Concentric AI autonomously finds data, evaluates its meaning, and assesses risk using its proprietary Risk Distance™ technology. The solution already helps big names like Cadence, Baron Capital and Nutanix defend against data loss by finding and protecting business-critical content at scale, wherever their data is stored.

Protecting unstructured and business-critical data

Action in the data security segment has centered on structured or semi-structured data. And those are essential bases to cover. But my partners at Ballistic and I knew unstructured data security was still a big unsolved problem. Concentric got our attention with an AI-based solution that scales to meet today’s exploding data volumes without driving costs.

Ultimately, companies should employ one security layer for unstructured, structured, and semi-structured data types. Concentric has that covered too — they secure both structured and unstructured data in the cloud or on-premises.

Security solutions don’t exist in a vacuum, and Concentric’s done a great job to make sure they’re good infosec citizens:

• They integrate with popular data classification frameworks, like Microsoft Information Protection so that companies can incorporate Concentric’s file analysis into existing content management workflows.
• The solution provides agentless connectivity to a wide variety of data repositories so companies can govern access to their data wherever it resides.
• Concentric’s deep learning engine works autonomously and accurately, eliminating complex, hard-to-manage rules and policies. It also means end-users don’t shoulder so much of the burden — file classification mistakes or files saved to the wrong folders aren’t the ticking security time bombs they used to be.

Concentric: A smarter way to secure unstructured data

These features only scratch the surface of the excellent work going on at Concentric — and we are thrilled to be along for the ride.

In addition to their product, we at Ballistic are also incredibly excited about Concentric’s founding team — a trio of innovators who live to serve their customers, deeply believe in the power of AI to solve tough data security challenges and have the expertise and energy to make it a reality. We are also motivated by the strength of the overall market for data security — particularly unstructured data security.

We look forward to working directly alongside Concentric’s leadership team — giving them full access to Ballistic’s perspective, insights, and support, backed by our unparalleled experience and network in the cybersecurity industry.