Hydden raises $4.4 million to improve identity security

Hydden announced that it has closed $4.4 million in seed funding led by Access Venture Partners. Other investors include Lockstep, the venture fund of CISOs Rinki Sethi and Lucas Moody, Service Provider Capital, and several cybersecurity angel investors including Andy Grolnick and Paul Trulove.

Founded by a team of seasoned identity security product and engineering leaders, Hydden’s innovative platform is used by security leaders to gain control over the identity attack surface.

Hydden’s identity security platform provides security leaders complete visibility into every identity, account, and privilege across hybrid infrastructure. The platform connects to existing IAM tools, cloud applications, and on-premises systems to build a real-time source of truth about the identity ecosystem. Hydden’s continuous discovery engine detects, classifies, and alerts on identity-related risks so security teams can quickly investigate and respond.

“Hydden is redefining identity security by delivering the comprehensive visibility, intelligent threat detection, and automation today’s security leaders need to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats” said Jai Dargan, CEO of Hydden. “As organizations grapple with the exponential growth of human and non-human identities, security blind spots are multiplying. Siloed IAM solutions, built for a different era, can’t keep pace with the complexities of modern, hybrid infrastructures. Hydden bridges this critical gap –empowering security teams to enhance identity hygiene and significantly reduce their identity attack surface without interfering with existing infrastructure investment.”

Despite billions of dollars invested in identity management and security solutions over the past decade, identity-based attacks continue to rise. According to the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA), 90% of organizations have experienced at least one identity-related incident in the past year.

Over-privileged users, backdoor accounts, and systems with poorly configured MFA are among the drivers of identity risk. Additionally, siloed, multi-vendor IAM technologies and fragmented processes make it difficult for security teams to accurately assess the identity attack surface or quickly prioritize actions to reduce risk.

“Modern IT environments are highly heterogeneous, with a range of cloud applications, on-prem systems, user directories, and PAM and IGA solutions, and companies often need specialists in every system to discover and interpret results for all of them,” according to Lucas Moody, CISO of Alteryx and General Partner of Lockstep. “IAM tools are often deployed in silos and interoperability and scalability constraints hinder identity security maturity. Hydden’s continuous discovery and threat detection engine addresses many of the gaps that existing IAM tools leave exposed while providing an interoperability layer that security teams urgently need.”

“Identity and account sprawl is a serious cyber defense challenge and most organizations lack the flexible and scalable tooling to discover all of the blindspots within the attack surface,” said Rinki Sethi, CISO of Bill.com and General Partner of Lockstep. “Hydden’s platform is a transformative approach that delivers immediate visibility into every identity and account, while connecting the dots to identify threats. We are excited to partner with Jai and the Hydden team in their next phase of growth as the platform addresses so many burning cybersecurity challenges that impact companies of all sizes.”

Hydden is for identity leaders who need an easier way to manage the identity attack surface across hybrid IT environments. Within the volume of data identity tools generate, Hydden finds critical issues that others miss.

• Hydden builds a single data layer across identity security solutions, including IAM, PAM, IGA, and ITDR. It cleans, normalizes, correlates, and models data so that any system can act on the information.
• Connectors automatically discover and interpret identity data wherever it lives, whether a container in a cloud platform or a mainframe in an on-premise data center.
• Continuous discovery surfaces new identity-related issues without compromising resources or impacting operations.
• A time capsule of identity history identifies patterns and informs post-event forensics and root cause analysis.

“Identity security is increasingly considered the center of modern cyber defense and identity-related initiatives are top priority for Boards of Directors, CEOs, and CISOs alike. We are thrilled to back Jai and his team of industry veterans, who possess deep knowledge of IAM infrastructure and have decades of experience building market-leading IAM technologies,” said Frank Mendicino III, Managing Partner and founder of Access Venture Partners. “The Hydden team has an incredible track record in helping lead some of the world’s leading identity companies, and we are confident in Hydden’s vision for the future.”