Ray Security Takes an Active Data Security Approach

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Evolving technology and advanced attackers have created new data security concerns for enterprises. There's more data available than ever, particularly thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and more interconnected devices. And attackers have noticed.

Disruptive and damaging data breaches continue to mount, affecting hundreds of millions of individuals in just one swoop. The ransomware evolution, where attackers now use data extortion threats over encryption highlights how data has become a currency.

But that means data loss prevention (DLP) is also more difficult; defenders want to become more proactive about protecting data, not just reacting to threats. A 2024 ESG survey showed that DLP was the number one privacy and protection technology investment enterprises intended to focus on for 2025.

Ray Security emerged from stealth today with $11 million in funding to address both data security and DLP challenges. CEO Ariel Zamir, CBO Eric Wolf, and CTO Dekel Levkovich founded the startup in 2024 with the goal of shifting data security approaches from visibility to action. The predictive data security platform uses a proprietary AI engine to help enterprises tackle next-gen data loss prevention, insider threats, ransomware, and AI data access governance issues, the company said.

Predict Your Security Forecast

While there are other data security posture management and DLP tools in the market, Ray Security claims to be the first to come with a predictive capability. That's because other tools are fundamentally reactive and prone to false positives, explains Zamir. "What makes our platform different is that we don't stop at inventory," he tells Dark Reading. "We analyze historical usage patterns, learn which data is going to be used soon versus later, and then anticipate where access will be required in the future and apply protection accordingly."

The predictive element, which is more commonly built into threat intelligence tools, is important because access shifts constantly. Employees on board, get promoted, or retire.

One use case Ray Security tries to solve is AI data access governance. It's becoming a nightmare for enterprises and is definitely getting worse, warns Zamir. AI ingests an overwhelming amount of data, regardless of whether it should have access to it. AI agents gather information and execute tasks based on it with minimal human intervention.

But that means sensitive data could end up in the wrong hands. Zamir attributes growing governance problems to three reasons: exploding AI adoption, tools requiring broad access to function effectively, and a lack of transparency from many AI vendors.

AI systems such as Copilot, Gemini, and Calude expose users to unnecessary information faster than ever, he says.

"As AI adoption accelerates, the number of systems pulling data and the number of people interacting with those systems increase rapidly," Zamir explains. "Without stronger access controls, enterprises risk a wave of new compliance and security issues."

Enterprises could also use the platform to approach data privacy concerns because it is based on managing access control. For example, if someone in human resources doesn't need access to financial records, the system would identify and eliminate that access path, explains Zamir.

Firewalls, Scanners, Action

Ray Security is offering a new take on data security with a predictive approach, reveals Todd Thiemann, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). One challenge in the space is that teams want visibility into data security posture gaps, but they also want to quickly triage alerts to weed out false positives and act, he adds. Therefore, a data security platform based on action does differentiate Ray Security.

"A predictive approach may help in solving the alert noise problem endemic in many DLP deployments," Thiemann says. "There's also new data loss vectors such as generative AI apps, and traditional solutions may not cover that as well."

Buyers in this space are experienced and will be skeptical, Theimann warns. But if the Ray Security platform is easy to administer, helps to solve the noise alert problem —because it's proactive — and is effective on some of the new use cases, it has a bright future ahead, anticipates Thiemann.

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