Tel Aviv-based Malanta aims to shift breach-detection left into attack-prevention by detecting and stopping attacks before they happen.
The cybersecurity startup has raised $10 million in seed funding in a round led by Cardumen Capital with participation from The Group Ventures (TGV). Angel investors in the pre-seed stage include Udi Mokady (founder and executive chairman of CyberArk); Benny Schneider; and Harel Prag and Amit Greener general partners at Rollout Ventures.
The seed money will be used to further expand Malanta’s engineering and ‘go to market’ efforts, and to improve its ability to detect what it calls indicators of pre-attack (IoPA). Finding these indicators culminates in the ability to detect adversary infrastructure, C&C servers and phishing kits in development; and block and dismantle them before they are used.
The platform collects and analyzes what it calls the digital breadcrumbs that attackers leave behind while preparing their campaigns, and it then forecasts how and when they will be weaponized. Kobi Ben Naim, co-founder and CEO of Malanta, explains: “Malanta tracks attacker behaviors around the attack infrastructure setup. Attackers, both human and AI agents (we call them AI.Attackers), acquire infrastructure such as domains, SSL certificates, and servers, and they create email addresses and social accounts, code repositories and other digital assets. These assets are used to set up the attack resources needed to launch attacks. It’s what MITRE ATTACK Framework refers to as Resource Development in the Pre-Attack phase of every attack. During this setup process they leave their footprints. Tracking this process and being able to associate a footprint to a malicious entity is a Malanta core patented innovation.”
For each new customer, Malanta immediately maps and discovers its digital assets. These assets are correlated with the discovered and analyzed adversary infrastructures to determine whether the client is under imminent threat from an attacker. But the service goes beyond the simple provision of another alert stream or pentesting service by indicating not that the client could be under threat, but that the client is under threat. The client is then advised on what steps should be taken to safeguard its assets from the imminent threat.
“On average,” claims the company, “we’re uncovering IoPAs weeks before they become malicious and are detected as IOCs by other vendors. That means we’re able to inform our customers sometimes months before they’re used in an attack or campaign. At that point, it’s up to the customer whether they act or wait for something to occur.”
But Malanta doesn’t restrict its activities to advance warnings to customers. “We work with registrars to takedown domains which are part of a malicious infrastructure that targets a customer. We work with ‘Safe Browsing’ services to block access,” expands Ben Naim.
A frequent question in this new age of AI is whether defenders can keep pace with the AI-assisted pace of attackers, and, by extension, whether Malanta can do the same. The speed with which attackers can build new infrastructure is an increasing problem; but one that doesn’t overly concern Ben Naim. “The main change we see in the past two years is an uplift in the use of AI during the very first stages of attack – pre-attack recon and resource development,” he comments.
Malanta mirrors the way attackers use AI. “We don’t have humans in the loop,” says the firm. “Instead, we leverage AI to be as autonomous as possible, which allows our platform to rapidly scale and work in the same way modern attackers do. We have automated unknown asset discovery from the AI.Attacker’s view, and we provide machine‑speed disruption at internet scale.”
Ben Naim is confident that Malanta’s own use of AI will ensure its rapid detection of criminal assets will maintain the firm’s ability to stay ahead of the attackers. It’s an impressive vision backed by sizable seed funding – to prevent attacks before they occur.
Malanta was founded in Tel Aviv in July 2024 by Kobi Ben Naim (CEO), Guy Ben Arie (head of engineering), Yossi Dantes (CPO), and Tal Kandel (CBO). All four met while previously working for CyberArk.
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