Sternum, an Israeli cybersecurity startup founded by a 28-year-old female founder, raises $6.5M to secure medical IoT devices

40 billion IoT devices are predicted to be in use by 2025, and until now, there has not been a scalable, endpoint cybersecurity solution that can be installed on individual devices. Instead, manufacturers have heavily relied on vulnerability patching or network security – approaches that have ultimately proven insufficient. Not only do connected devices lack adequate security protection, but manufacturers also are not capturing valuable data points from devices in operation. Device data can provide key insights for optimizing performance, supporting future developments, and profiling and mitigating third-party behavior and risk.

Enter Sternum, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based IoT cybersecurity tech startup that provides embedded protection and unprecedented real-time visibility for connected devices. Sternum provides on-device real-time threat detection and prevention, as well as cloud-based monitoring, management, and response platform for IoT devices. Its technology helps to accelerate and secure the global implementation of IoT across multiple sectors, including medical, smart energy & utilities, industrial IoT, and more.

Today, Sternum announced it has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding to expand its R&D team and bolster its go-to-market strategy as the company ushers in the next generation of IoT with its cutting-edge cybersecurity and monitoring solutions. The new round, which brings Sternum’s total funding raised to $10 million in just under two years, was led by Square Peg, with participation from existing investor and global business leader Merle Hinrich, European venture capital firm btov, and private investors including Boston-based veteran entrepreneur Eyal Shavit and Founder & CEO of CyberArk, Udi Mokady.

Sternum was founded in 2018 by a team of highly experienced research, development, and business leaders, many coming from the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) elite Unit 8200. The startup is led by CEO and co-founder Natali Tshuva. With a profound understanding of embedded systems, deep insights into defenders’ and attackers’ mindsets, and a goal of creating a new standard of cybersecurity and visibility for IoT devices, Sternum is building uncompromising, innovative technology poised to enable the IoT revolution. Sternum’s product suite consists of two key solutions: Embedded Integrity Verification (EIV) and Advanced Detection System (ADS). Both answer the unique needs of IoT device manufacturers in medical, industry 4.0, smart cities, energy, and beyond.

Sternum’s scalable, embedded solutions are injected into a device’s binary code and can be integrated into a wide range of IoT devices – low-end, high-end, old, new, existing devices, RTOS, and Linux-based – with no configurations or changes to existing code required.

Unlike other solutions, Sternum is not focused on the endless race of patching every vulnerability found on a device; instead, its solutions are focused on the exploitation stage of any cyber-attack, preventing it in real-time by immunizing the entire device code against breaches. Sternum’s next-generation solutions ensure streamlined security and immersive monitoring of all aspects of a device, including third-party components, providing valuable insights that improve products.

“I’m excited to say that we are the only company offering both an embedded, agentless, and holistic security solution for all IoT devices, as well as the ability to monitor them through an intelligent cloud platform, no matter the operating system or resources available, thus creating the first on-device technology acceptable by all IoT devices,” said Natali Tshuva, CEO and co-founder of Sternum.

Tshuva added, “This round, closed during a global pandemic, is a vote of confidence in our dual vision for IoT cybersecurity and on-device intelligence, our technology, and most importantly, our team. With these new funds, we will continue actively recruiting researchers and engineers to grow our industry-leading R&D team in our mission to secure all IoT devices and obtain insights that will vastly improve our connected world.”

“We are impressed with Sternum’s innovative products and diverse team, whose technologies will power our connected future with uncompromising security protection and rich, data-driven insights,” said Philippe Schwartz, Partner at Square Peg. “We look forward to supporting the Sternum team as they continue to help their customers protect and secure their business-critical IoT devices.”

Following this investment, Sternum also announced that Shavit, Schwartz and Hinrich will join its Board of Directors.