Enterprise artificial intelligence security startup Knostic Inc. announced today that it has raised $11 million in new funding to bolster its offering, support enterprises with their AI transformation, and add a customizable safety layer to tools such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and Glean.

Founded in 2023, Knostic offers need-to-know-based access controls for large language models to enhance enterprise AI security. The company’s solutions allow organizations to adopt AI technologies such as Copilot safely, ensuring that sensitive information is shared only with authorized personnel.

Among its services, Knostic offers a Copilot Readiness Assessment, which identifies potential data leakage and oversharing before deploying AI at scale. The approach is designed to allow enterprises to address security concerns early in their AI implementation process.

Knostic also automatically derives need-to-know levels across an organization by analyzing existing permissions and role descriptions. The result ensures that AI-powered tools provide users with information relevant to their roles without exposing unnecessary data.

Other Knostic services include continuous monitoring that detects policy drift and violations that could lead to data leakage and remediation guidance to adjust permissions and labels, minimizing the risk of oversharing.

“Unlike traditional access controls, which limit our options to just allowing or denying access, need-to-know policies enable LLM answers that can be reshaped to fit within the user’s own business context,” said co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Sounil Yu. “Need-to-know boundaries allow enterprises to accelerate their AI adoption without compromising security.”

While relatively young, Knostic’s solution has already gained industry attention, with the company being named as a Launch Pad winner at the 2024 RSA Conference and the 2024 Black Hat Startup Spotlight Competition.

The Series A round was led by Bright Pixel Capital. New and existing investors, including Silicon Valley CISO Investments, DNX Ventures, Seedcamp Ltd. and angel investors Kevin Mahaffey, founder of Lookout Inc., and Gerhard Eschelbeck, former chief information security officer of Google LLC, also participated.

Image: Knostic