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HiddenLayer, an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity startup born out of a cyberattack that exploited machine studying code on the founders’ prior firm, has introduced a $50 million Sequence A funding spherical at the moment to additional harden the defenses of the quickly rising variety of AI fashions being adopted by enterprises.
The spherical was led by M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, and Moore Strategic Ventures, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, Capital One Ventures, and Ten Eleven Ventures.
“AI’s unapparelled fee of adoption fuels us to maneuver even quicker in attaining our mission to provide each safety skilled the correct instruments and experience for embracing AI securely,” mentioned Chris Sestito, CEO and Co-Founder at HiddenLayer, in an announcement within the firm’s press launch saying the spherical.
Already, HiddenLayer helps safeguard AI/ML fashions utilized by a variety of Fortune 100 companies throughout sectors inclucing finance, authorities and protection, and cybersecurity.
What HiddenLayer does
As beforehand lined by VentureBeat final 12 months following its emergence from stealth, HiddenLayer has constructed a variety of instruments as a part of its “MLSec” Platform for safeguarding enterprise machine studying (ML) and AI fashions.
These instruments don’t truly entry the fashions, nor compromise the proprietary knowledge and expertise of purchasers. As an alternative, they passively monitor the efficiency and operations of enterprises ML/AI fashions and linked purposes in realtime, scanning overarching vulnerabilities and providing suggestions for hardening them, in addition to detecting injection of malicious code/malware and deploying protection mechanisms to chop off the attackers and isolate any intrusions.
HiddenLayer’s MLSec Platform ships with a easy however highly effective dashboard permitting safety managers to get entry to all the knowledge they want in regards to the safety state of their enterprise ML/AI fashions at a look. It additionally robotically lists safety points and alerts so as of precedence relying on the severity of the problem, and shops knowledge for the compliance, auditing and reporting {that a} enterprise could also be requested to do.
HiddenLayer additional affords consulting providers from its crew of Adversarial Machine Studying (AML) consultants who keep atop the most recent traits in safety and the most recent threats. They’ll carry out menace assessments, coaching for a shopper’s cybersecurity and dev ops personnel, and carry out “crimson crew” workout routines to make sure the shopper’s defenses are working as supposed.
Influential companion
Earlier this 12 months, the corporate struck a partnership with white-hot enterprise knowledge lakehouse supplier Databricks, permitting Databricks enterprise prospects to make use of HiddenLayer’s MLSec Platform instantly on their fashions operating on Databricks’ lakehouses.
“The combination is mannequin agnostic and consists of mannequin scanning and mannequin detection and response,” defined HiddenLayer on the time in a blog post announcing the partnership. “This permits Knowledge Scientists and ML Engineers so as to add safety to their fashions with no code or behavioral adjustments to their setting. Because the mannequin is loaded, it will likely be scanned by HiddenLayer’s mannequin scanner to make sure integrity in addition to safety. If an assault is detected, the mixing will deal with the response accordingly with none human interplay wanted.”
What’s subsequent for HiddenLayer’s quest to safe enterprise AI?
HiddenLayer was based after co-founders Sestito (CEO), Tanner Burns (chief scientist) and Jim Ballard (chief info officer) after the three encountered a cyberattack on ML fashions on the prior firm, Cylance, a safety startup.
As recollected on HiddenLayer’s website, the incident occurred when “attackers had exploited Cylance’s Home windows executable ML mannequin utilizing an inference assault, exposing its weaknesses and permitting them to supply binary recordsdata that might efficiently evade detection and infect each Cylance buyer.”
Whereas worrisome and traumatic on the time, the trio realized then that assaults on ML/AI would solely enhance within the close to future as extra enterprises sought to undertake generative AI into their workflows because of the expertise’s nice promise at growing effectivity and efficiency.
Immediately, HiddenLayer is rising quickly, having quadrupled its headcount within the final 12 months. Now flush with its Sequence A money, it plans to rent one other 40 personnel by the 12 months’s finish, and cont proceed rising its shopper base.