Cyberattacks are on the rise, and the victims are high-profile. According to a KPMG survey, close to half of companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue recently suffered a security breach. Surprisingly, an overabundance of security tools may be contributing to the problem. In a separate poll, 43% of businesses said their teams were overwhelmed with alerts.
Piyush Sharma is well-acquainted with cybersecurity tool overload. As an engineering director at Symantec, Sharma led the development of several app control, endpoint security, and integration management products, and was responsible for ensuring that these tools played nicely together.
“Organizations struggle with tool fragmentation, where disparate security solutions operate in silos, making it difficult to achieve a unified defense strategy,” Sharma told TechCrunch. “Additionally, the sheer volume of vulnerabilities and alerts overwhelms security teams, leading to inefficient resource allocation and extended remediation times. These challenges are compounded by limited budgets and the need to meet stringent compliance requirements.”
This didn’t make Sharma’s job easy — and he thought he might know a better way. So, along with GE veteran Vipul Parmar and Om Moolchandani, Sharma launched Tuskira, a platform to unify disparate security tools.
“Tuskira was founded to solve the challenges of managing fragmented, reactive security systems,” Sharma said. “The company’s mission is to preempt threats and optimize security operations, helping businesses stay ahead of evolving cyber risks.”
Tuskira looks for exploits and misconfigurations in a firm’s security stack, providing analyses across code, cloud environments, apps, and infrastructure. The platform also “optimizes” security tools in addition to aggregating them, Sharma says, delivering ostensibly improved monitoring capabilities.
“By focusing on reducing attacker dwell time and strengthening defenses proactively, Tuskira offers a more comprehensive and efficient solution compared to competitors who often address threats in isolation,” Sharma said. “Tuskira is built for enterprises across industries such as finance, healthcare, technology, and government, providing actionable insights and measurable improvements to their security posture.”
Tuskira is Sharma, Parmar, and Moolchandani’s second cybersecurity venture. In 2019, the trio founded cloud security startup Accurics, which Tenable acquired in 2021 for $160 million.
Now, Tuskira isn’t the only security tool aggregator on the market. Avalor is another; it acts as a source of truth for security assets, allowing security teams to track risk data.
Be that as it may, San Francisco-based, roughly-50-person Tuskira managed to win over investors with its pitch. The company recently closed a $28.5 million funding round co-led by Intel Capital and SYN Ventures with participation from Sorenson Capital, Rain Capital, and Wipro Ventures.
That’s an impressive feat considering the current state of cybersecurity funding. In Q3, investors poured just $2.1 billion into cybersecurity startups, 51% less than they invested in Q2, per Crunchbase.
“Partnering with these investors brings strategic guidance and connections that help accelerate Tuskira as we emerge out of stealth,” Sharma said. “The funding will be used to advance Tuskira’s AI technology, expand integrations, and enhance customer onboarding processes. Tuskira is well-positioned to sustain any headwinds as we raise the capital.”
