Prevoty

Prevoty, founded in 2013 by Julien Bellanger and Kunal Anand, established itself as a key player in the application security sector before being acquired by Imperva in 2018 for $140 million. Bellanger, who served as CEO, brought business acumen from previous ventures, including founding Personagraph, while CTO Kunal Anand contributed deep technical expertise from defending major platforms like MySpace and the BBC. Their combined experience addressed a critical market need for more effective software security solutions.

The company specialized in Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP), a technology designed to enable applications to defend themselves against attacks in real-time. Prevoty's security-as-a-service platform was engineered to be embedded directly within an application's environment. This approach allowed it to monitor and block malicious activity from the inside, providing a significant advantage over traditional perimeter-based security models. The core of its product was the Autonomous Application Protection (AAP) platform, which used a language-theoretic security (LANGSEC) approach to analyze and neutralize threats within the application's runtime, effectively preventing attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting without relying on predefined signatures.

Prevoty's business model was centered on providing its RASP solutions to enterprise clients, particularly in the technology, media, retail, and finance industries. By integrating with an application, the technology offered real-time visibility and protection, feeding critical threat intelligence into Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. This capability was crucial for organizations adopting agile and DevOps methodologies, as it allowed security to be built natively into the development lifecycle. Before its acquisition, the company had successfully raised approximately $25.8 million through multiple funding rounds from investors including U.S. Venture Partners, ForgePoint Capital, and others.

The acquisition by Imperva was a strategic move to integrate Prevoty's RASP technology into Imperva's broader cybersecurity portfolio, enhancing protection for applications both on-premises and in the cloud. The deal aimed to provide customers with a more comprehensive view of their security posture by combining network, data, and application-level defenses, solidifying Imperva's position in the DevOps and application security markets. Keywords: Runtime Application Self-Protection, RASP, application security, LANGSEC, DevOps security, web application security, Imperva, Julien Bellanger, Kunal Anand, security-as-a-service, real-time threat intelligence, Autonomous Application Protection, application monitoring, vulnerability remediation, zero day attack prevention, DevSecOps, application self-protection, database security, cloud application security, agile development security, threat visibility