Ex-NSO researchers' Kodem exits stealth with $25M to cut appsec alert noise by 95%

Kodem is an application security startup that analyzes applications' runtime data and surfaces only the alerts relevant to a customer's particular stack of applications and services.

Runtime intelligence can tell which of an app's possible vulnerabilities are actually exploitable, cutting alerts by 95% instead of scanning everything.

$25M total: $7M seed co-led by TPY Capital and Greylock, plus an $18M Series A led by Greylock.

Security researchers Aviv Mussinger, Pavel Furman and Idan Bartura spent years at NSO Group, the firm behind Pegasus spyware, and founded Kodem in Israel in 2021. Their takeaway: 'open source has destroyed the traditional approach to security', and at NSO they 'saw everything from the inside and understood how things could be built in a better way'.

The seed and Series A paid for building the platform and launching it globally; by June 2023 Kodem already counted customers in financial services, insurance and technology. Greylock partner Asheem Chandna called its team the 'next generation of application security — cloud-native, deploys seamlessly'.

AppSec is a noise problem as much as a detection problem; whoever fixes triage wins the security team's attention.

The runtime claim is framed with falsifiable numbers — under 10% used, under 5% vulnerable, 95% fewer alerts — which is rare in security marketing.

Offensive-security veterans pivoting to defense gave the startup insider insight into how attacks are actually built.

In security tooling, alert volume is the product: a scanner that throws away 95% of findings can win against one that finds everything.

As of 13 June 2023 Kodem was launching its platform globally with customers in financial services, insurance and technology; no revenue figures were disclosed.