2025 VC Survey5 cybersecurity trends and startups to watch in 2025
2025 VC Survey
5 cybersecurity trends and startups to watch in 2025
From AI-powered solutions to identity security, these Israeli startups are shaping the future of digital defense.
Israel's cybersecurity landscape is undergoing a transformative shift, moving beyond traditional endpoint protection to address the complex challenges of modern digital infrastructure. The sector is undergoing a renewed focus on concentrating on securing cloud-based applications, AI adaptations, interconnected devices, and emerging digital identities. These insights are evident in the 2025 VC Survey project, currently published on CTech, which includes interviews with over 50 leading venture capital fund managers in Israel.
As part of the survey, investors were asked to select two startups they anticipate will excel in the upcoming year, including those within their current investment portfolios, and provide rationales for their selections. Unsurprisingly, cybersecurity companies emerged as the most prominent sector among investor preferences. Key developments include advanced SaaS security management platforms that provide comprehensive visibility into organizational applications, identifying and automating vulnerability remediation. AI-powered virtual CISO platforms are emerging to support smaller businesses, offering expert cybersecurity guidance without the need for full-time security personnel.
As more and more end devices powered by AI are connected to the network, securing machine identities has become critical. Israeli companies are developing platforms to manage device access, ensuring only authorized connections to sensitive systems. Additionally, security validation technologies are being created to simulate cyber attacks, helping organizations proactively identify and address potential weaknesses.
These advances represent a fundamental reimagining of cybersecurity—from reactive defense to proactive, intelligent protection. The Israeli approach emphasizes not just data protection, but comprehensive digital identity management and strategic risk mitigation.
The analysis highlights several emerging priorities in digital security, with Israeli startups leading innovation across multiple fronts.
The Rise of SaaS Security
SaaS security has emerged as a critical focus area, driven by the widespread adoption of cloud-based applications. Companies like Wing Security are developing sophisticated SaaS Security Posture Management solutions, offering organizations comprehensive visibility and automated remediation capabilities.
Wing Security
Description of the product/service: Wing’s SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solution delivers continuous visibility, prioritized insights, and automated remediation across the SaaS ecosystem.
Investment amount: $26M
Founding year: 2020
Reasoning why this is their year, according to S capital: With the rapid shift of cyber threats from endpoints to SaaS applications, Wing Security is uniquely positioned to address this growing attack surface. Organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for SSPM and ITDR solutions to proactively manage risks, prevent breaches, and ensure operational continuity. This year marks a tipping point as businesses prioritize SaaS security as a top strategic investment area.
The Need for AI-Driven Cybersecurity
Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing cybersecurity approaches, with companies leveraging AI in novel ways. Led by the increasingly sophisticated tactics of cybercriminals, the expanding attack surface caused by cloud and SaaS adoption, and the unique security challenges posed by the emergence of AI-powered systems. Zenity specializes in securing AI agents and applications themselves – a growing concern as AI adoption accelerates.
Zenity
Description of the product/service: Zenity is a leader in helping enterprises secure and govern AI Agents and Apps.
Investment amount: $60M total raised
Founding year: 2021
Reasoning why this is their year according to UpWest: 2024 was already a fantastic year for the company, including securing a large Series B round in conjunction with the continued explosion of Agentic AI. We expect 2025 to continue cementing Zenity as a cybersecurity leader in this space as it continues building on its strong momentum.
Focus on Proactive Defense
The industry is witnessing a marked shift toward proactive defense strategies. Nagomi Security epitomizes this approach with its platform that aligns security capabilities with emerging threats, enabling organizations to anticipate and prevent potential breaches rather than merely responding to them.
Nagomi Security
Description of the product/service: Nagomi’s platform enables customers to maximize the effectiveness of their security stacks to defend against emerging, relevant threats that are being carried out in the wild.
Investment amount: $30 million
Founding year: 2023
Reasoning why this is their year according to Team8: The cybersecurity industry is fraught with challenges, not least of which is the complexity of managing diverse and fragmented security tools. It’s becoming unsustainable and enterprises are longing for a solution. Nagomi’s platform addresses this directly by providing organizations with clarity on how well their tools are configured to combat specific threats. This is increasingly important as the threat environment evolves and new vulnerabilities emerge. By enabling continuous reassessment and realignment of security postures, Nagomi helps organizations stay ahead of the attackers whilst gaining true visibility of their security posture.
Emphasis on Identity Security
Identity security has become another crucial frontier, particularly as organizations manage increasingly complex digital ecosystems. Akeyless addresses this challenge through its unified platform for secrets and machine identity management, securing access across diverse environments.
Akeyless
Description of the product/service: Akeyless unifies secrets and machine identity management, securing credentials, certificates, and keys across all environments with a scalable platform.
Investment amount: $88.5 million
Founding year: 2019
Reasoning why this is their year according to Team8: Machine identity, also referred to as non-human identities (NHI), became top of mind as a growing threat for enterprises, resulting in the founding of numerous new startups in this space in the past two years. Akeyless is further ahead at growth stage with marquee Fortune 100 customers across many industries, recently securing a strategic investment from Deutsche Bank. With IBM acquiring its main competitor, Hashicorp Vault, we believe Akeyless has immense opportunity for market leadership and exceptional growth.
The Growing Importance of Cloud Security
Cloud security continues to gain prominence as business operations increasingly migrate to cloud environments. Companies like Tamnoon, specializing in managed cloud security, offer solutions to help organizations optimize their cloud security posture and protect against AI-driven attacks. This trend has spurred innovation in managed cloud security solutions, with companies developing tools to optimize security posture and defend against sophisticated, AI-driven attacks.
Tamnoon
Description of the product/service: Enabling security teams to predictably, reliably, and efficiently optimize their cloud security posture while minimizing the impact on their environment.
Investment amount: $18M
Founding year: 2021
Reasoning why this is their year according to Elron Ventures: 2025 marks a pivotal year for Tamnoon as AI-driven cloud attacks escalate and CNAPP consolidates the cloud security stack. With its unique blend of Human Intelligence and AI-driven remediation, Tamnoon stands out as the trusted partner for closing critical security gaps and leading the way in managed cloud threat exposure and remediation.
