Cyber startup Orion Security raises $6M Seed round to combat insider data breaches
New funding backs AI-driven data protection as enterprises face growing exfiltration risks.
Orion Security, an AI-driven data protection startup, has raised a $6 million Seed round led by Pico Partners and FXP, with participation from Underscore VC and cybersecurity veterans, including the founders of Perimeter 81 and the CISO of Elastic. As enterprises struggle with escalating data breaches—many caused by insiders—Orion aims to redefine how organizations safeguard sensitive information in an era of generative AI and cloud computing.
The rise of large language models has made it easier than ever for employees to unintentionally leak sensitive data, as seen in high-profile cases such as Samsung’s ChatGPT-related breach. At the same time, malicious actors—including North Korean state-sponsored groups—are embedding operatives within organizations to steal proprietary information. With the average cost of a data breach reaching nearly $5 million in 2024, enterprises are under mounting pressure to secure their data without stifling productivity.
Orion Security, founded by former Cisco-acquired Epsagon product leader Nitay Milner and cybersecurity expert Yonatan Kreiner, takes a radically different approach. Instead of relying on rigid, rule-based security policies that often fail to adapt to modern cloud environments, Orion uses AI to map an organization’s "operational DNA"—learning how data normally moves within a company and flagging anomalies. This enables Orion to distinguish between legitimate workflows and potential data exfiltration, whether intentional or accidental.
"Today's data protection tools are failing because they lack the crucial business context needed to understand what's truly risky," said Milner. "By using AI to map and understand an organization's operational DNA, we're enabling a new generation of data protection that can accurately distinguish between legitimate business workflows and potential data theft, without burdening already overstretched security teams."
Orion’s technology integrates directly with cloud services, browsers, and devices to track data movement across an organization. The company’s proprietary Indicators of Leakage (IOL) engine leverages AI-driven reasoning models and large language models (LLMs) to analyze usage patterns, automatically detecting risky behaviors without overwhelming security teams with false positives.
