Five Cybersecurity Founders Rethinking Enterprise Defense for AI and Cloud Stacks

Enterprise cybersecurity is seeing a wave of specialized startups designed to protect infrastructure and software systems altered by artificial intelligence and distributed cloud tooling. A recent profile published by The Next Web outlined five cybersecurity executives and startups addressing distinct layers of the modern security stack.

In external attack surface management, CyCognito chief executive Rob Gurzeev applies an offensive security background—including experience with Israel’s Unit 8200 and cybersecurity research roles—to map enterprise networks from an outside adversary's vantage point. CyCognito uses automated testing and analysis to identify exposed, sensitive, and exploitable digital assets without requiring customers to supply a baseline inventory or network configuration.

Targeting security operations, Asaf Wiener co-founded Mate Security after directing vulnerability management initiatives at Wiz and Microsoft. At Wiz, Wiener led product lines serving Fortune 500 customers, and at Microsoft, he assisted in transitioning Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management into a standalone commercial product. Mate Security focuses on agentic security operations using a Security Context Graph, providing a technical framework to deploy autonomous AI agents with operational guardrails for active threat investigation and response.

Addressing endpoint defense, Bloom Security emerged from stealth this summer with a $20 million seed funding round led by Glilot Capital Partners and Ten Eleven Ventures. Co-founder and CEO Itay Keren argues that the traditional enterprise endpoint has expanded beyond basic operating systems and hardware. Bloom is engineered to secure modern developer and AI-centric environments that include AI agents, Model Context Protocol servers, integrated development environments, browser extensions, and modular software packages.

On the remediation side, Barak Klinghofer established Reclaim Security to address the backlog of known vulnerabilities. Klinghofer previously co-founded incident response startup Hexadite, which was acquired by Microsoft, before working inside Microsoft Security. Reclaim focuses on automated exposure remediation, analyzing the potential operational impact of a security fix before deployment to production environments.

In identity and access management, Way Security CEO Yossi Barishev brings experience managing advanced persistent threats and nation-state adversaries. Way launched from stealth this summer with a $20 million seed round co-led by Insight Partners and Glilot Capital. The company is developing an AI-driven enforcement layer intended to translate corporate identity controls into active security policies across distributed applications and users.