NLP for data loss prevention in the cloud
Today companies are driving workforce productivity using 3rd party SaaS applications like Salesforce, Jira, Dropbox which form the backbone of critical functions across the organization. According to a 2020 Devsquad study, companies deploy, on average, 34 different SaaS tools, and that number increases dramatically with company size (reference 1 below).
Company tech stacks are also becoming increasingly decentralized and thus harder to manage. Communication tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams have made it easier than ever to collaborate across teams, but have also led to sensitive information moving unchecked across the enterprise, increasing the risk of data loss and leakage. Last year, over 165 million records were either lost or exposed within the US alone (reference 2 below), all the while increased regulation (e.g., GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act) has levied significant fines and put additional pressure on businesses to revamp their information security and data loss prevention (DLP) strategies.
As organizations continue to grapple with this changing landscape, we are thrilled to announce our investment in Polymer Solutions’ (“Polymer”) seed round. Cyber security is one of our key investment areas, and continues to be important as more work moves to the cloud. We are proud to support Polymer’s vision to become the preeminent platform that manages DLP and redaction across the enterprise technology stack. While most of the DLP market has focused on encryption-based solutions for at-rest data, Polymer is unique in its approach by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) on unstructured, in-motion data to redact Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and sensitive corporate information. This solution will be critical to companies that collect sensitive customer information, such as financial or health data.
Polymer provides an easy-to-use solution that allows enterprise Information Technology departments to create access controls as well as monitor, secure and redact sensitive data across dozens of collaboration apps, including Slack, Github, Dropbox and Zapier. Polymer’s product has already gained significant traction with several large enterprise clients.
Polymer was founded by Yasir Ali and Usman Malik, who are supported by a strong technical team of cyber security, big data and machine learning experts who are excited and well-positioned to tackle this complex data redaction problem. We are thrilled to partner and support Yasir, Usman, and the Polymer team as they continue to expand their data governance platform and grow into a leading security company!
1 ”60 SaaS Statistics and Trends for 2020”, Industry study via Devsquad, 2020
2 “Annual number of data breaches and exposed records in the United States from 2005 to 2019,” Identity Theft Resource Center, 2019