The global cybersecurity industry faces a massive talent shortage, with over 4 million unfilled positions worldwide, according to a recent World Economic Forum report. This shortage is expected to skyrocket to 85 million in the next five years. As cyberattacks grow in sophistication and frequency, the demand for skilled professionals far exceeds supply. Recognizing this pressing issue, Intezer, a cybersecurity startup, has raised $33 million in a Series C funding round to enhance its AI-powered tools aimed at addressing the gap.
Founded by Itai Tevet, former head of the Cyber Incident Response Team (CERT) in Israel’s IDF, Intezer seeks to automate crucial aspects of cybersecurity monitoring. During his time at the IDF, Tevet noticed that even highly secure organizations struggled with the sheer volume of alerts generated by monitoring systems, making it difficult to determine which alerts were critical and which were false positives.
The recent funding round, led by Norwest Venture Partners, brings Intezer’s total raised to $60 million. Existing investors, including Intel Capital, OpenView, Magma, and Alon Cohen, co-founder of CyberArk, also participated in the round. Intezer is based in New York but maintains strong ties to Israel, where much of its research and development is rooted.
Intezer’s solution doesn’t attempt to reinvent cybersecurity but rather focuses on streamlining and improving existing processes. With security teams often overwhelmed by thousands of daily alerts—anywhere between 4,000 and 11,000—manually investigating each one can take hours. Intezer’s AI platform, however, reduces this burden, analyzing and triaging alerts in just minutes, allowing human teams to focus on genuine threats.
At the heart of Intezer’s platform is its AI technology, which builds upon the company’s early research into mapping the “genome” of security threats. This involves creating a DNA-like map that categorizes various cybersecurity vectors and threats, enabling the platform to quickly identify connections and origins of malicious activity. The company has achieved notable success with this approach, including identifying the origins of the WannaCry attack and uncovering a new malware family, HiddenWasp.
While Intezer has formed partnerships with major cybersecurity players like Palo Alto Networks, Wiz, and CrowdStrike, the startup faces potential challenges as the security industry evolves. As more tools emerge, consolidation within the industry seems likely, posing decisions for Intezer’s future—whether to remain independent or merge with a larger entity. For now, Intezer is focused on expanding its AI capabilities to make cybersecurity more manageable amid the growing demand for skilled professionals.
