Asaf Kochan

At RSAC 2025, I had the opportunity to speak with Adrian Sanabria about one of the most pressing and complex challenges facing security teams today: data security. Since then, the urgency around the future of data security has only intensified.

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We're watching a major inflection point unfold across industries. Organizations are generating and storing more data than ever, while simultaneously adopting AI at a pace that outstrips most security programs. At the same time, regulators are enforcing data privacy with increasing sharpness. These trends all converge on one critical question:

Do you know where your sensitive data is - and who can access it?

If the answer is no, then it's time to rethink your approach.

Data is Now The Most Valuable, And Volatile Asset

For years, security tools have operated largely without visibility into the data itself. We've focused on endpoints, perimeters, and identities - all essential layers. But in 2025, that’s no longer sufficient.

Data is now the most valuable, and volatile asset most companies have. We’re seeing this in breach investigations, where the root cause often traces back to unmonitored or duplicated sensitive data left in the wrong place. We're seeing it in AI deployments, where teams rush to fine-tune models or deploy copilots without knowing what's inside the datasets they’re exposing. And we’re certainly seeing it in regulatory fines, many of which stem from nothing more than storing customer data longer than necessary, in the wrong place, or in unsecured formats.

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What all of this underscores is a simple truth: you can’t protect what you can’t see.

The Role of DSPM in the Future of Data Security

At Sentra, we’ve built our platform around a core philosophy that Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is not just a security tool, it’s the future of data security, an enabler of responsible innovation. The foundation starts with sensitive data discovery. Most organizations are surprised by how much sensitive data exists outside expected systems- in backups, temporary stores, or SaaS apps that were never properly offboarded. From there, classification adds context. It’s not enough to label something as “PII”, we need to understand how sensitive it is, who owns it, how it is being used, and how it should be governed.

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We built Sentra as a cloud-native solution from day one. That means it works across IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and even on-prem environments without needing agents or pulling data outside the customer’s environment. That last point is non-negotiable for us. As a security company, we believe strongly that extracting customer data for analysis creates unnecessary risk and liability.

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To support classification at scale, especially for unstructured data, we developed our own language models using open-source LLMs. This provides the deep contextual understanding needed to accurately label large volumes of data all while maintaining cost efficiency and avoiding unnecessary compute overhead.

AI, Risk, and Responsibility in Data Securityy

One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing in the market is how AI has elevated data security from a technical concern to a boardroom issue. Security teams are now being asked to approve large-scale data usage for AI training, RAG systems, copilots, and internal assistants. But very few have the tools to answer basic questions about what’s in those datasets.

I’ve worked with customers who only realized after deploying AI that they had been exposing medical records, credentials, or confidential meeting data to the model. Once it’s in, you can’t pull it back. That’s why data classification and risk detection must come before any AI integration.

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This is precisely the use case we had in mind when we built Sentra’s Data Security for AI Module. It helps teams scan, assess, and verify the contents of data before it ever touches a model. The goal isn’t to slow down innovation - it’s to make it safer, auditable, and repeatable.

Proactive Risk Management Helps Enterprises Ship Faster

One of the most exciting developments we’ve seen for the future of data security is how quickly Sentra’s data security platform becomes a strategic asset for enterprise data risk management. Time to value is fast in many cases, our customers discover major data risks just days after deployment. But beyond those early wins, the real power lies in alignment.

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When security leaders can map data to risk, compliance, and governance frameworks, and do so continuously, they’re no longer operating reactively. They’re enabling the business, helping teams ship faster with fewer unknowns, and building trust around how AI and data are managed.

At scale, this kind of maturity is the difference between organizations that can confidently embrace generative AI and those that will always be playing catch-up.

A Final Word

From my time in the Israeli Defense Forces and Unit 8200 to helping enterprises build modern security programs, I’ve seen one truth over and over again: data left behind is data exposed. The volume may grow, the threats may change, but this principle doesn’t.

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In 2025, securing data is no longer an aspiration, it’s a baseline. Whether you’re preparing for your next AI initiative, facing regulatory audits, or just trying to get visibility into sprawling cloud environments, DSPM should be your first step. At Sentra, we’re proud to help lead this change. And we believe the organizations that take control of their data today will be the ones best positioned to lead tomorrow.

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By Asaf Kochan, Co-Founder and President, Sentra

Series A announcements are an exciting time for any startup, and we look forward to working with our new investors from Standard Investments, Munich re Ventures (MRV), Moore Strategic Ventures, and INT3 to grow the cloud data security and data security posture management (DSPM) categories. 

I wanted to take a moment to share some of my thoughts around what this round means for Sentra, cloud data security, and the growth of the DSPM category as a whole. 

Seeing is Believing: From Potential Customer to Investor

The most amazing part of this round is that we didn’t originally intend to raise money. We approached Standard Industries as a potential customer not an investor. It was incredible to see how bought-in the team was to Sentra’s approach to data security. They understood instantly the potential for securing not only Standard’s data, but the data of every cloud-first enterprise. The total addressable market for data security solutions is already large, and it’s growing every year, as more and more new companies are now cloud-native. The global need for solutions like Sentra was obvious to their team after seeing the product, and I’m excited to have a forward-thinking investor like Standard as part of our journey. 

It’s a Vote of Confidence in the Sentra Team and Product

Any Series A is first and foremost a vote of confidence. It’s an endorsement of the vision of the company, the approach the product is taking, and the potential of the core team to continue to grow the business. Anyone who has spoken with our talented team understands the level of expertise and perseverance they bring to every task, meeting, and challenge. I’m proud of the team we’ve built, and I’m excited to welcome many new Sentrans to the team in the coming months. 

As I mentioned, the round is also a mark of confidence of the development and direction of the product itself. Working with our existing customers, we’ve regularly added new features, integrations, and capabilities to our solution. As we continue to discover, classify, and secure larger amounts of data in all cloud environments, the benefits of a data centric approach become clear. We’ve successfully reduced the risks of catastrophic data breaches by reducing the data attack surface, improved relationships between engineering and security teams by breaking down silos, and even helped our customers reduce cloud costs by finding and eliminating duplicate data. 

Data Security is a Must, Not a Nice to Have

Raising money in the current economic climate is not to be taken for granted. The significant investment in Sentra’s vision speaks not only to the value provided by Sentra’s product and team, but also to how critical data security has become. Compliance, privacy, and security concerns are present regardless of how the NASDAQ is performing.

Certainly we’re seeing no slowdown in data security regulations. Global enterprises are now responsible for ensuring compliance with a growing number of data regulations from different government and commercial sources across the globe.  When it comes to security and IP protection, the threat of a catastrophic data breach is top of mind for all cloud security teams. As the reality sets in that breaches are not a matter of “if” but “when”, the logic of the data centric approach becomes clear: If you can’t prevent the initial breach, you can make sure your most sensitive data always has the proper security posture. In the future we’re building, not every breach will be newsworthy, because not every breach will involve sensitive data. This funding round demonstrates the growing acceptance that this is the direction cloud security is and should be heading. 

DSPM will Come to Dominate Cloud Security

There’s always some skepticism in the cyber world when a new category is created. 

• Is the problem it claims to solve really that serious?
• Can we just use existing paradigms and tools to address it?
• Is implementing a new tool going to make a real difference for the business? 

These questions are valid, and any cyber company operating in a new space must address them forthrightly and clearly. We have been clear from the beginning - a data centric approach to security with DSPM is not a small step, but a giant leap forward. Data is the core asset of most companies, and that asset is now stored in the cloud. Old approaches will not be sufficient. This new round is led by investors who recognize this new reality and share our vision that we need to put data at the core of cloud security strategies.

I want to end by again emphasizing how thankful I am for having amazing investors, partners, and team members join us over the last 18 months. So much has been accomplished already, but the industry shift to data centric security has only just begun. I’m looking forward to continuing to protect the most important business asset in the world - our data.