Shield Raises USD 20M to “Shield” Its Data With AI

Highlights:

• To prevent data leaks, Shield’s financial compliance solution employs AI to track employee activity on messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
• The amount of compliance liabilities in the financial services industry has dramatically increased, with Wall Street firms facing fines of USD 2 billion for staff employees’ inappropriate use of WhatsApp.

It would help if you had real-time awareness of where data leaks reside and travel throughout the environment for accurate detection. To identify possible security issues and manage them before they result in compliance liabilities, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation are essential.

Shield, a risk intelligence provider, is one of the leading companies using AI to drive threat prevention. Today, Shield revealed it has raised USD 20 million as part of a series B fundraising round headed by Macquarie Capital.

Shield’s financial compliance solution uses AI to detect employee activity on communication platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams and continuously analyze employee behavior to stop data leaks.

Organizations can use this automated method to automatically deal with insider threats and the disclosure of regulated information in a way that can keep up with the speed at which data is moving around the environment.

AI is used to control compliance risk

The announcement comes as businesses battle to keep the flow of regulated data under control; research indicates that approximately one in ten employees will leak data in a period of over six months.

The financial services sector has seen a sharp increase in compliance liabilities, with Wall Street banks facing fines of two billion dollars for staff members’ unauthorized use of WhatsApp.

Organizations have switched to hybrid working environments without putting the security protections necessary to safeguard sensitive data from exposure as it moves within and outside of the network in place. This is one of the major reasons why it is difficult to manage insider threats and data leaks.

Shiran Weitzman, the CEO and cofounder of Shiled, said, “COVID accelerated the new way in which we communicate across businesses. With an immediate need to address business continuity, overnight, organizations of all types became overly reliant on electronic communication channels like WhatsApp, Zoom, and Slack.”

He added, “While convenient, this massive communication shift also brings significant risk, compliance and security concerns that could result in disastrous data leaks and debilitating fines.”

Due to this rise in complexity, it has become considerably more challenging for security teams to keep track of how data is accessed and moved through the network.

Weitzman said, “With so many new communications channels, compliance, security, and IT executives, and their teams, are being flooded with data that is difficult to decipher, archive, and analyze.”

Weitzman’s approach to this problem is to give security teams access to a defensive AI compliance tool that can spot possible hazards in real-time across various communication channels and stop careless or malevolent insiders before they can disclose regulated material.

Examining alternative AI-driven compliance solutions

Analysts predict that the enterprise governance, risk, and compliance software market will reach USD 96.98 billion by 2028, which is a general fit for Shield’s solution.

The supplier competes with other compliance suppliers, including Behavox, a risk and compliance provider that employs AI to monitor instant messaging networks for dangers like market manipulation, conflicts of interest, and financial crime.

The most recent funding announcement from Behavox was to raise USD 100 million in February 2020.

Relativity, a provider of legal and compliance e-discovery software, is another rival. It uses AI with specific goals to continuously monitor the actions and behaviors of employees and contractors to guard against data breaches. In 2021, Relativity was valued at USD 3.6 billion.

Shield’s AI strategy is the primary distinction between it and these companies. Weitzman said, “Shield’s AI and ML [machine learning] technology is able to model real human behavior and generate proactive, relevant alerts that add critical context to every decision.”