AI-cybersecurity firm Andesite secures added $23M in funding
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The company, which is led by former CIA officials and other ex-national intelligence chiefs, also unveiled a new security operations center product, the firm first told Nextgov/FCW.
Cybersecurity firm Andesite secured an added $23 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds to $38.5 million after an initial seed round in April, the company first told Nextgov/FCW on Tuesday. The startup also unveiled a new security operations center product — widely known as a SOC — designed to integrate human expertise with artificial intelligence tooling for cyber defense.
The product launch comes amid a flurry of eagerness to integrate AI tools in cybersecurity settings. Officials have frequently touted the use of AI and related machine learning systems as a valuable digital security utility, as analysts are often thrown troves of cyber threat intelligence data that needs to be quickly processed and reviewed to stop hackers and physical threats to safety.
The latest investment is backed by General Catalyst and Red Cell Partners, respective incubation and VC firms focused on cybersecurity, national security and healthcare.
Andesite’s leadership includes former CIA covert ops and information security officials Brian Carbaugh and William MacMillan. Former national cyber director Chris Inglis also sits on its board of directors. MacMillian spoke with Nextgov/FCW this past summer amid CrowdStrike’s accidental Windows outage that impacted millions of devices around the world.
In a news release, the company said its new SOC platform is meant to help security teams move from reacting to alerts to proactively hunting threats. By consolidating data from multiple sources, the system aims to provide analysts with a more comprehensive view of potential security risks, the company argued.
“Security analysts are irreplaceable: their intuitive pattern recognition, creative thinking and ability to turn insights into action are crucial,” said Andesite’s co-founder and CEO Brian Carbaugh, who was a former director of the CIA’s Special Activities Center.
Andesite said the new system is built to meet enterprise security and compliance standards, including the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. The system is designed to automate repetitive tasks, such as correlating threat intelligence and initiating responses, while allowing analysts to focus on higher-level investigations.
“Our vision for the SOC is a symbiotic relationship between human and AI that elevates analysts of every skill level. For CISOs, this means not just better outcomes faster, but the ability to buy down more risk with the team they already have,” MacMillan said.