Salesforce Invests In Cybersecurity Startup Cerby -

Cerby has received $12 million in seed funding from the venture capital division of Salesforce and other investors, according to a prepared statement. The seed funding brings Cerby's total financing to $15.5 million.

In addition, Cerby has launched a security platform for unmanageable applications. The platform combines technology, robotic process automation (RPA) and integrations from Okta and other identity access companies to help organizations automate their security policies.

A Closer Look at Cerby's Platform

Cerby's platform protects organizations against common application misconfigurations that violate security best practices, the company said. In doing so, the platform helps organizations guard against data breaches.

Organizations can use Cerby's platform to manage and automate security hygiene tasks for applications. They can add, remove and share access to Facebook, Twitter and other apps. They can also link tasks to employee creation and removal events in Okta, Microsoft Azure, Azure Active Directory and other systems.

Cerby offers more than 30 integrations for its platform. It does not offer a channel partner program, but may look to provide one in the future.

Unmanageable Apps Plague North American, UK Businesses

Many companies are forced to deal with unmanageable apps and other technologies that employees use without consent from their IT departments, according to a Cerby study of more than 500 business professionals from North America and the UK.

Key takeaways from the study include:

92% of employees and managers in large enterprises noted they want full control over the applications they deploy for work-related purposes.

60% said that having an application blocked by their organization would reduce their assessment of how much their employer trusted them and negatively affect the way they thought about their job and/or organization.

25% do not want their IT or security departments to have final sign-off on the applications they use.

19% who have a preferred work application blocked by their company or IT department ignored the ruling and continued to use the prohibited application.

There is a gap between how organizations control the technologies that employees use for their jobs and the technologies that workers prefer, Cerby CEO Belsasar Lepe explains. With technologies to control unmanageable applications, organizations can allow their workers to use apps to simultaneously maximize their productivity and minimize the risk of data breaches.