Privacy Startup Skyflow Raises $7.5 Million After Stealth Mode

Skyflow, a Mountain View, CA-based startup in the data privacy space, came out of stealth mode today with the announcement of a $7.5 million seed funding round for its API-based data privacy solution.

The company was founded in 2019 by two former Salesforce executives and serial tech entrepreneurs, Anshu Sharma and Prakash Khot. Skyflow’s seed round was led by Foundation Capital’s Ashu Garg, with additional capital from investors Jeff Immelt and Jonathan Bush. 

The product is simply referred to as “an API for privacy,” designed to provide companies with a secure encrypted vault for sensitive data and personally identifiable consumer information such as credit card and social security numbers.  With a simple API integration, Skyflow allows companies to control access to govern and manage sensitive data with just a few API calls. 

Today, there is a great deal of demand for privacy solutions in general, especially for those that simplify and centralize management processes, especially with the institution of privacy law through legislation such as European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the recent California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

“Despite the growing number of cybersecurity offerings, we continue to see data breaches of customers’ social security numbers, credit card data, and even their health data,” Sharma said in a press release.  “Even with a spate of new laws, from GDPR to CCPA, built to motivate companies to do the right thing for consumers, companies continue to abide only by the letter of security compliance, rather than by its true spirit.”

The tool enforces zero-trust authentication and access control to all sensitive information stored within the cloud-native privacy data vault. That means each access request is evaluated for risk and verified, or the individual requesting will need to provide further authentication to gain access.

“Unlike most payment systems, Apple Pay doesn’t even ever store or use your real credit card number even when you make a payment,” Sharma explained. “Skyflow has taken a similar approach to all the sensitive data so companies can run their workflows, analytics and machine learning to serve the customer, but do so without exposing the data as a result of a potential theft or breach. Recent breakthroughs in encryption and new hardware technologies like Intel SGX have allowed us to build something that was a distant dream for most even a few years ago.”

Zero-trust is impacting more than just privacy. It’s taking over networks, applications, and cloud environments for businesses of all sizes. Visit our zero-trust networking software category to learn more about the solutions available today.