Israeli cybersecurity startup Pillar Security has secured US$9 million in seed funding.

The funding round was led by Shield Capital and included contributions from Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, and various angel investors.

Founded in October 2023 by Dor Sarig and Ziv Karliner, the company focuses on cybersecurity for AI applications.

The funding will support the development of Pillar’s technology and the expansion of its security solutions for enterprise AI applications.

🔗 Source: Calcalist

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ The evolution from pattern-based to agentic cybersecurity threats requires new defenses

Traditional cybersecurity tools were designed to identify known attack patterns, but AI-driven threats operate fundamentally differently, creating an urgent protection gap.

According to one major study, AI enables attackers to launch more sophisticated, automated, and adaptive attacks that can evade conventional security measures that rely on recognizing established patterns 1.

This shift has already resulted in real consequences. A Deloitte survey found that 40% of organizations have experienced AI-related security incidents, with 25% of those being malicious attacks rather than accidents.

Organizations with fully deployed AI security solutions see an average reduction of $3 million in data breach costs, demonstrating both the scale of the problem and the potential value of effective countermeasures 2.

2️⃣ AI capabilities create novel attack vectors beyond traditional cybersecurity paradigms

The security challenges posed by AI systems extend beyond traditional network protection to include entirely new categories of attacks like prompt injections, model manipulation, and training data poisoning.

Researchers have documented how AI enables attacks such as automated hacking, speech synthesis for impersonation, and hyper-targeted social engineering using information gathered from social media 3.

These novel threats are significant enough that 69% of enterprise executives now believe AI is essential for responding to cyberattacks, with telecommunications companies being the most concerned sector (80% reliance on AI for threat detection) 4.

AI-driven threats have evolved to exploit unique vulnerabilities in machine learning systems while still being difficult to detect using conventional tools 1.