Cybersecurity startup StrikeReady emerges from stealth with $3.6M in seed funding to create a resilient cybersecurity environment

No day goes by without another headline on cyberattack and data breaches. To keep pace with cyber attackers, organizations need to be one step ahead of the bad guys. Having the best cybersecurity tools is not enough. Organizations also need to work together, collaborate, and share threats and security information with one another. Enter StrikeReady, a Palo Alto, California-based cybersecurity startup that brings organizations together to create a resilient cybersecurity environment.

After decades of experience in cybersecurity and talking to hundreds of cybersecurity analysts and CISOs, the StrikeReady team identified three key problems to modernize security operations: cybersecurity skill gap, cybersecurity talent shortage, and collaboration issue.

To address these problems, StrikeReady has built a cloud-based security operations and management platform that maximizes return on organizations’ existing security investments – people, process, and products. The platform integrates, operationalizes, optimizes, and consolidates disparate security products, and assists and empowers cybersecurity teams. The convergence of AI, data, and automation helps the defenders to quickly respond to incidents, proactively defend against emerging threats, and/or operate at lightning speed.

Today, StrikeReady emerges out of stealth with $3.6 million in seed funding to accelerate Go-To-Market and sales, and grow the R&D team. The seed round was led by 11.2 Capital, with participation from Outlier Venture Capital and multiple Silicon Valley angel investors.

Founded in 2019, the StrikeReady team is led by Yasir Khalid, formerly an engineering leader and an architect of core detection technologies at FireEye, where he spent ten years and his work led to over fifteen cybersecurity patents, and supported by CPO, Anurag Gurtu, formerly head of security product marketing (UEBA) at Splunk, and prior to that head of technical marketing at FireEye and product management at Cisco.

The majority of the talent at StrikeReady are all early-timers from FireEye, who have had extensive experience working on various security stacks – network security, endpoint security, email security, cloud security, and automation. This ex-FireEye team was instrumental in handling threat research, threat intelligence, R&D, engineering, and sales. In less than two years, the team has successfully deployed the product at multiple mid and large enterprises and government agencies in the United States and internationally.

Yasir Khalid, Founder and CEO of StrikeReady, said: “Our vision is to take a human-centered approach to make the security team effective and exceptionally efficient while transforming all the cybersecurity analysts to be an expert and without off-the-job training.”

Commenting on the investment, Pramod Gosavi, Principal, 11.2 Capital, said: “Assume you’re going to get breached – is the new normal for the cybersecurity industry since bad actors are scaling their attacks through automation, and organizations need to adopt a similar approach. Convergence of AI, knowledge, and automation is a must to improve security analysts’ productivity and abridge their skill gap. StrikeReady’s founders, Yasir and Anurag, have deep domain expertise in security operations and AI-powered automation. They have built a unique product that accelerates incident investigation, automates response, imparts knowledge, and proactively secures the organization. 11.2 Capital is excited to support the team’s mission in bringing Security Operations into the future.”