Valence Security, an early-stage startup with roots in Israel, is attracting significant interest from venture capital investors.

Exactly a year after emerging from stealth with aggressive plans to tackle software-as-a-service (SaaS) application security, Valence Security has closed a $25 million Series A funding round led by Microsoft’s M12 venture fund.

The latest funding brings the total raised by Valence Security to $32 million and provides a runway for the company to build out its SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management) technology in a lucrative but crowded market.

In addition to Microsoft’s M12 fund, previous investor YL Ventures joined the financing round alongside Porsche Ventures, Akamai Technologies and Alumni Ventures.

Valence is building technology to help corporate defenders deploy, manage and secure critical SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce and Slack.

The company said the platform can be used to inventory users, data privileges, configurations and third-party integrations, and help with continuous compliance with internal policies, industry standards and regulations.

The SSPM space, which includes well-capitalized startups like Grip Security, DoControl and Adaptive Shield, has grown in importance as SaaS becomes the default delivery model for business-critical applications. This SaaS sprawl has led to massive amounts of sensitive data being stored outside the traditional controls of the corporate network and specialized tools are emerging to manage this problem.

Valence Security says its platform can be used to remediate third-party integration, identity, misconfiguration and data sharing risks across critical SaaS applications.

By Ryan Naraine on Wed, 26 Oct 2022 12:35:53 +0000
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