South American startup Strike Security has secured $5.4 million to fund an ambitious plan to disrupt the penetration testing and attack surface management business.
Strike Security, founded by Uruguayan security researcher Santiago Rosenblatt, said the seed stage financing was led by Greyhound Capital, with participation from venture capital outfits FJ Labs, Canary, NXTP, VentureFriends, Magma Partners, Latitud and Orok Ventures.
A roster of boldfaced names in cybersecurity, including former IOActive CTO Cesar Cerrudo and Palo Alto CSO Sergej Epp, have backed the startup, Rosenblatt said in an interview with SecurityWeek.
Rosenblatt said the plan is to build a plug-and-play platform for small businesses to purchase access to some of the best white-hat hackers in the world for what Strike Security calls “perpetual pentesting.”
The company is bucking the trend by publishing its price list to appeal to startups and smaller companies that struggle to keep pace with patching and mitigating serious vulnerabilities across computing devices.
Rosenblatt, who quit his job as head of appsec at a food delivery company to create the company, said Strike Security can be “ten times cheaper” and still provide high-quality security assessments from the best hackers in the world.
He said the company’s has recruited from vetted researchers in its own network – the company is calling them ‘Strikers’ – and is scaling the service by providing a place for freelancers to participate in the marketplace.
In the first few months since launching the company, Rosenblatt said the company has found success with startups in Latin America, particularly in the cryptocurrency space and with the new funding in hand, Strike Security will pursue aggressive expansion plans into the U.S. and Europe.
Related: CyCognito Snags $100M Investment for Attack Surface Management
Related: Investors Bet on Cyberpion in Attack Surface Management Space
Related: Attack Surface Management Play Censys Scores $35M Investment