Preempt Security

Preempt Security was established in 2014 by co-founders Ajit Sancheti and Roman Blachman, positioning itself in the enterprise security market with a focus on identity-based threats. Sancheti, who served as CEO, brought entrepreneurial experience from his previous venture, Mu Dynamics, which was acquired by Spirent Communications, and held roles at Juniper Networks and OneSecure. Blachman, the CTO, contributed a deep background in mobile security research from his time at Lacoon Mobile Security and the Israeli Defense Forces' elite technological unit.

The company developed a platform centered on the principles of Zero Trust and conditional access, designed to prevent security breaches and insider threats before they escalate. Preempt's technology operated by continuously analyzing identity, behavior, and risk to detect and preempt malicious activities in real-time. Rather than simply logging an event, the system could apply adaptive responses, such as forcing re-authentication, challenging the user with multi-factor authentication, or blocking the action entirely based on the perceived risk. This allowed enterprises to enforce security policies without disrupting legitimate business operations. The platform gathered data from various sources, including Active Directory, cloud single sign-on partners like Okta, and network traffic logs, to inform its machine learning models.

The firm operated on a business-to-business (B2B) model, serving enterprises looking to bolster their security posture against credential-based attacks and insider threats. Over its operational history, Preempt Security raised a total of $27.5 million through several funding rounds, with backing from investors such as Intel Capital, Blackstone Group, General Catalyst, and ClearSky. The company's trajectory culminated in a significant milestone in September 2020, when it was acquired by CrowdStrike for approximately $96 million. The acquisition was a strategic move by CrowdStrike to integrate Preempt's identity-centric threat prevention capabilities into its Falcon platform, aiming to provide a more comprehensive Zero Trust security solution for hybrid work environments.

Keywords: Preempt Security, identity threat detection, conditional access, Zero Trust security, insider threat prevention, Ajit Sancheti, Roman Blachman, CrowdStrike acquisition, real-time threat prevention, behavioral analytics, access control, identity hygiene, credential theft protection, privileged account abuse, user behavior analytics, enterprise security, identity and access management, multi-factor authentication enforcement, cybersecurity, network security