Team8 Launches Cloud Security Startup Portshift With $5M Seed Round

Cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform Team8 announced the official launch on Tuesday of its newest venture Portshift, a cloud-workload protection platform, with $5.3 million in seed funding.

Portshift is an identity-based cloud workload protection platform that secures applications in a way that is built into the deployment rather than layered on after, offering continuous security from code to run-time. “Portshift’s unique model introduces security that is decoupled from the network and operations that is decoupled from security,” the company says.

Previously in stealth mode, Portshift “is already working with several large organizations across multiple sectors with massive deployment in the cloud in both US and Europe,” Team8 said in a statement.

The startup was founded by Ran Ilany, a serial entrepreneur and former head of security infrastructure division at Check Point Technologies, and Zohar Kaufman, previously the founder and VP of R&D at CTERA Networks and VP of R&D at SofaWare technologies. Eran Grabiner, who leads the company’s business activity, was previously COO of Spotinst.

“The old world of security based on IPs and ports is not able to keep up with the way IT infrastructure scales today, resulting in a lack of visibility and loss of control of the network and even worse, a complete bypass of security by developers or even worse an attacker. In order to keep up, security has to ‘shift left’, to be integrated into part of the development, deployment, and operations processes.” said Ilany.

“Security should be something that operational teams can orchestrate as part of their day-to-day job, rather than a separate step once the application is already deployed,” added Kaufman.

Team8 has launched a number of successful cybersecurity companies including Illusive Networks, which develops deception tech to detect hacking attacks, Claroty, which provides advanced solutions to secure critical infrastructure systems, Hysolate, a creator of a “hybrid” endpoint architecture technology, and Sygnia, a military-grade cyber consulting and incident response company set to be acquired by Temasek for a reported $250 million.

Team8 is headed by Nadav Tzafrir, and operates in Tel Aviv and New York City. The foundry has raised $260 million since its founding in 2014, and employs over 350 people.

Team8 also operates a new $85 million fund to build cybersecurity and data companies over the next five years. Investors in the fund include Walmart, Softbank, Scotiabank, Barclays, Airbus, M-12, Microsoft’s venture-capital arm, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, Cisco, and Nokia.