Sublime, which claims to be the first open email security platform that lets anyone write, run and share rules to detect and block email-originated threats, has raised $9.8m.
Alongside the investment round, Sublime has launched its services to the public, following a private beta test for over a year. Its technology is already used by dozens of organisations, including Fortune 500s, Global 2000s, and FTSE 250s, it said. The company boasts an organisation waitlist of 2,500.
The investment was led by Decibel, with commitments also coming from Slow Ventures.
Several cybersecurity professionals and founders also joined the round as angel backers. These include Cyber Defense Matrix creator Sounil Yu, Sourcefire founder Martin Roesch, former New York Stock Exchange CISO Jerry Perullo, Lookout founder Kevin Patrick Mahaffey and Pangea founder Oliver Friedrichs.
Sublime was created by former Department of Defense offensive security professional Joshua Kamdjou and former Optimizely and Alto growth head Ian Thiel.
Kamdjou started working with DoD in high school and over eight years he worked and led numerous offensive security efforts. Whilst also working as a red teamer in the private sector, Kamdjou found that phishing was always his easiest entry point.
Data from the FBI claims phishing emails are the most popular attack method for cybercrimes. Financial fallout from this attack type increased from $1.8bn in 2020 to $2.4bn in 2021.
Kamdjou set out to create a product that could stop someone like him and realised the key was empowering email security professionals to collaborate and have more control. Through the community, users can share detections, receive new rules and updates, automatically and build their own rules to block threats.
Sublime claims to be the first open, free and self-hostable email security platform. With one line of code and a Docker instance, anyone can set up Sublime for free in their own environments and start running behavioural rules to block phishing attacks and other email-borne threats.
It also claims to be the first domain-specific language purpose-built for email. Its message query language works across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, allowing cross-platform collaboration using detection-as-code for detection engineering, threat hunting, and triage.
Sublime also claims to be the first community-powered email security platform and the first to integrate machine learning with customisable rules in email.
Sublime founder and CEO Joshua Kamdjou said, “Security professionals are used to having control and being able to collaborate in every area of security BUT email: YARA for binaries, Sigma/EQL for logs, Snort/Suricata for networks, osquery/EDR for endpoint, Semgrep for static analysis.
“It’s time for that to change. We want to make it easy for anyone to secure their organisation from email-based threats, whether you’re a large enterprise, nonprofit, or small business. There are so many more bad actors than good guys trying to keep people safe. If we open it up and let everyone contribute we actually stand a fighting chance.”
In other CyberTech news, Karambit.AI, which helps companies secure their software supply chains, received a $75,000 grant from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation.
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