1stProtect Emerges From Stealth With $20 Million in Funding

1stProtect today emerged from stealth with $20 million in funding from Andra Capital and All Blue Capital, the company said. The San Francisco-based startup has built an endpoint security platform that monitors system behaviour and verifies user intent to prevent cyberattacks in real time. Its pre-emptive solution enforces security policies at runtime, blocking malicious activity at the operating system level rather than relying on cloud-based decision-making.

The platform analyses the attack’s destination and intent, operating as a self-defending system even in disconnected or restricted environments, and comprises nearly two dozen protection modules covering credential and session theft, ransomware, data exfiltration, application and browser security, runtime behaviour, and identity and Active Directory attacks. It also features an AI investigator for local forensic analysis, enabling investigation and remediation directly on the system when offline.

The company’s chief executive officer is Kervin Pillay, previously chief technology officer of Automation at Cisco, while chief technology officer Rafel Ivgi has held senior roles at SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, Symantec and Forcepoint.