Data privacy continues to be top of mind for companies all around the world, particularly as laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation go into effect this year. Now a Bellevue, Wash.-based startup just raised a seed investment round to help its customers ensure that they are staying compliant.
Prifender today announced a $5 million seed round led by Firstime VC, with participation from Shaked Ventures and iAngels.
Founded in 2015 and led by former executives from Microsoft, eBay, and PayPal, Prifender has developed an automated data privacy platform used by dozens of Fortune 500 companies for compliance requirements, risk management and data protection related to personal information of individual customers.
Prifender helps map personal information across all networks and associate identities with appropriate privacy requirements.
“Prifender ensures companies are able to comply with data privacy regulations and consumer privacy expectations, be it the uncertainty about the status of data (whether it has been destroyed when it should, or whether there has been a breach), compliance with legal flow over the border or correct usage amongst all parties that can access it,” explained Prifender COO Omer Matityahu. “Failure to do so results in significant fines, severe reputational damage or worse case, closure.”
Jonathan Bernartzi, managing parter at Firstime VC, said he believes Prifender’s technology “will become the industry standard for privacy compliance.”
“The digital world is currently undergoing a revolution with anything concerning the collection and usage of personal information held by large corporations,” he said in a statement.
There is horsepower in Prifender’s C-suite. Christopher Glover, CTO, previously led PayPal and eBay’s data architecture. Pedro Pinheiro was previously Microsoft’s Europe’s cloud services lead. Dr. Sagi Leizerov, Prifender’s co-founder, was formerly Ernst & Young’s head of global privacy practice. Nimrod Luria, the company’s other co-founder and CEO, previously co-founded two startups and is a former Microsoft employee.
Prifender competes with fellow Seattle-area privacy startup Integris, which raised $1.5 million earlier this year. BigID, which raised $14 million in January, is another competitor.
