Akto

Akto.io, a cybersecurity firm headquartered in San Francisco, California, was established in 2022 by co-founders Ankita Gupta (CEO) and Ankush Jain (CTO). The founding duo combines extensive experience from the tech and finance sectors; Gupta held roles at CleverTap, VMware, LinkedIn, and J.P. Morgan, while Jain worked at CleverTap and as a Quantitative Associate at Morgan Stanley. Their mission originated after interviewing over 200 security engineers to address a critical market gap for a rapidly deployable API security solution.

The company operates in the application security market, providing an open-source, plug-and-play platform designed to help developers and security teams secure their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Akto targets modern application security teams, DevSecOps professionals, and organizations of all sizes, including those in financial services, healthcare, and e-commerce. Its business model is based on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription, offering tiered versions of its platform, including a free community edition and paid 'Team' and 'Enterprise' plans. This model is supported by a significant $4.5 million seed funding round secured in November 2022, led by Accel, with participation from notable angel investors.

Akto's core product is an API security platform that automates the entire security lifecycle. It provides continuous, real-time discovery of all APIs, including internal, public, and third-party ones, to create a comprehensive inventory and identify shadow and zombie APIs. The platform then tests for a wide range of vulnerabilities, such as those listed in the OWASP Top 10, and business logic flaws like broken authentication and authorization. It integrates directly into the CI/CD pipeline, allowing developers to run security checks before deployment. A key feature is its ability to analyze traffic contextually using AI/ML to reduce false positives. The platform supports various environments, including AWS and GCP, and can be deployed as a SaaS or self-hosted solution.

Keywords: API security, DevSecOps, application security, cybersecurity, API discovery, API testing, PII data leaks, business logic vulnerabilities, CI/CD security, open source security, runtime protection, API posture management, cloud security, automated security testing, vulnerability detection, Ankita Gupta, Ankush Jain, Accel, network management software, SaaS, API protection, shadow API, zombie API, OWASP Top 10, API catalog