India-based Cybersecurity Firm Astra Security Raises $2.7 Million in Funding

Security platform Astra Security raised $2.7 million in a growth capital round led by Emergent Ventures. Neon Fund, Better Capital, Blume Ventures, and PointOne Capital participated. The company said it will use the funds to drive AI-driven solutions.

While AI is evolving rapidly, threat actors are using it to find loopholes, leading to more security breaches. Sikhil Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Astra, addressed the fact by saying, “The cybercrime landscape is becoming increasingly complex with AI-based attacks.”

He further said that traditional, periodic penetration testing is no longer sufficient in the current threat landscape. To stay ahead of cybercriminals, Astra Security is transitioning many businesses to continuous penetration testing. 

While the engineering sector has embraced agility, collaboration, and automation, the cybersecurity industry has fallen behind. Their mission is to revitalise the security domain by incorporating AI, adopting a hacker’s perspective, and simplifying technology.

Astra Security’s pentest platform tries to simplify the chaotic penetration testing for organisations and defend from AI-based threats using its AI-powered offensive vulnerability scanning engine that emulates hacker behaviour to scan applications for 10,000+ security tests.

The company, founded in 2018 by Sikhil Sharma and Ananda Krishna, has uncovered 2,000,000+ vulnerabilities for its customers, saving customers $69 million and more in potential losses due to security vulnerabilities involving companies like Loom, HackerRank, ITC, Olx Autos, Mamaearth, Muthoot Finance, University of Cambridge, CompTIA, and Prime Healthcare.

The founders were hackers and builders who helped big brands like Microsoft, Adobe, AT&T, Yahoo, and Blackberry, which led them to create Astra Security.

“Security is increasingly shifting to the hands of developers, while security teams find themselves more overwhelmed than ever,” said Ananda Krishna, co-founder and CTO of Astra. So, with the funding, Astra Security aims to equip cybersecurity teams with sophisticated solutions to keep up with the demands of today’s fast-evolving digital environments.

To begin with, they plan to focus on their product OrbitX and expand the capabilities of their scanning engine, which will allow organisations to defend their digital infrastructures continuously in real time. They also plan to leverage AI to enhance automated and manual pen tests.