Zest Security Aims to Resolve Cloud Risks

Organizations have plenty of tools to identify cloud risks, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations, but not so much for remediating cloud risks. For most companies, significant collaboration is needed between DevOps and security teams to validate the risk, understand the root cause, and determine the best resolution.

Remediating risk usually involves a series of manual and time-consuming processes. Cybersecurity startup Zest Security wants to change that with its AI-powered platform designed to simplify and automate risk resolution. The platform correlates and pinpoints the root cause of cloud risks to craft resolution paths that eliminate cloud vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that attackers can exploit, Zest said in a statement.

On average, it takes 30 to 60 days to remediate a single cloud security risk, and 80% of resolved risks resurface after remediation, Zest said. The increase in known cloud attacks is directly the result of lack of efficient and effective remediation.

"Zest eliminates the back-and-forth typically required between security and DevOps teams to determine the best path to mitigation and remediation," said Matthew Hurewitz, director of platforms and application security at Best Buy, in a statement. "Zest shows security teams all of their options, so they can quickly and confidently resolve their vulnerabilities."

As part of the launch, Zest Security also raised $5 million in seed funding from Hanaco Ventures, Silvertech Ventures, and several angel investors. The company's co-founders have years of experience in cloud and product security. Uri Aronovici, Zest’s CTO, previously worked at Akamai Technologies and Check Point Software. Prior to founding Zest, Snir Ben Shimol, Zest's CEO, built the global cybersecurity platform and services organization at Varonis. Shimol was also the CSO of Cider Security before it was acquired by Palo Alto Networks.