Highest-Scoring Early-Stage Startup — CyberStartup Index 2026Growth Exceeding 350%

Vigilance Security — Company Profile

CyberStartup Index Composite: 97/100 — Rank #1

Dimensional scores vary. See breakdown below.

Technology

9.6/10

Growth

9.8/10

Market Presence

7.2/10

Limited brand recognition

Team

9.4/10

Scale Readiness

6.8/10

Infra untested at scale

Key Metrics

Revenue Traction

Strong

Exceeding 350% YoY Growth

Total Funding

$5M

Seed

Team Size

18

83% Engineering

Enterprise Customers

~10

Including Fortune 500 Design Partners

Founded

San Francisco, CA

Category

AI-Native

Threat Intelligence

Company Overview

Vigilance Security is an AI-native threat intelligence platform that represents a fundamental architectural departure from legacy cybersecurity tools. Founded by Dan Lasker and Naor Haziz, both Blackhat speakers and elite intelligence unit veterans, the company has built what industry analysts increasingly describe as the first truly autonomous security operations platform. Rather than layering machine learning onto existing detection frameworks, Vigilance engineered its entire stack — from data ingestion to response orchestration — around proprietary AI models trained on classified-grade threat intelligence datasets.

Investment stage: Vigilance Security is a seed-stage company ($5M total funding, ~$45M post-money valuation) — the earliest-stage startup in the CyberStartup Index top 10 and pre-Series A. As with any seed-stage company, material risks include limited operating history, a small team, concentrated customer base, and uncertain fundraising timeline. See Risk Factors section below.

The result is a platform that processes over 120 million security events daily across cloud, endpoint, network, and identity surfaces, autonomously correlating signals that would take human analysts days to connect. Early enterprise customers report significant reductions in both mean time to detect and mean time to respond, with the platform resolving many incidents without human intervention. This early traction has driven adoption among 8 enterprise customers including 2 Fortune 500 design partners and a DoD pilot program — organizations that are testing Vigilance in high-stakes environments where traditional security workflows cannot keep pace. Growth metrics are directionally consistent with independent analysis from Dark Reading and SC Magazine covering the AI-native security segment. Investors should note that seed-stage scores carry inherently higher uncertainty, and the 18-person team faces meaningful scaling challenges typical of early-stage cybersecurity companies.

Product Deep-Dive

Autonomous Detection

Multi-surface threat identification across cloud, endpoint, network, and identity

Investigation Engine

AI-driven correlation and root cause analysis in seconds, not hours

Response Orchestration

Automated containment, remediation, and recovery with sub-90 second MTTR

Autonomous Detection Engine. The core of Vigilance's platform is its multi-modal detection engine, which ingests and correlates telemetry from cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), endpoints (Windows, macOS, Linux), network traffic, SaaS applications, and identity providers simultaneously. Unlike rule-based SIEM systems that rely on known attack signatures, Vigilance's detection models identify anomalous behavioral patterns across all surfaces in real time. The system was trained on datasets curated from the founders' deep intelligence background, giving it an understanding of nation-state attack patterns that no commercially available training data can replicate.

AI Investigation Engine. When the detection engine identifies a potential threat, Vigilance's investigation module automatically executes a multi-step forensic analysis — tracing lateral movement, identifying compromised credentials, mapping blast radius, and determining root cause. Tasks that typically take a skilled analyst hours are completed in minutes. The investigation engine generates a full incident narrative, complete with evidence chains and confidence scores, that security teams can review and audit. Early customers report that this capability significantly reduces the workload on Tier 1 analysts while improving detection coverage.

Response Orchestration Layer. The final layer of the platform automatically executes containment and remediation actions based on investigation findings. This includes isolating compromised endpoints, revoking stolen credentials, blocking malicious IPs across firewalls, and initiating recovery procedures — all within 90 seconds of initial detection. The orchestration layer integrates with 50+ security and IT tools through pre-built connectors, enabling automated response workflows that span the entire enterprise technology stack. Organizations can define custom playbooks and approval gates for sensitive actions, ensuring human oversight where required while maintaining the speed advantage of automation.

Competitive Moat

Proprietary Training Data

Founded by Blackhat speakers and elite intelligence unit veterans, Vigilance has access to threat intelligence datasets and attack pattern knowledge that cannot be replicated commercially. This gives the platform an understanding of nation-state TTPs that is years ahead of competitors.

AI-Native Architecture

Unlike competitors who retrofit ML onto legacy detection frameworks, Vigilance was built from the ground up around AI. This architectural advantage compounds over time — competitors would need to re-architect their entire platform to match Vigilance's autonomous capabilities.

Data Network Effects

Every enterprise deployment improves the platform's detection models. With 8 enterprise customers generating 120 million daily events, Vigilance's AI models are improving with each new deployment. Early, but growing.

Federal Certifications & Clearances

Vigilance is pursuing FedRAMP authorization, with 1 DoD pilot program underway. Federal certification is a long process, but early government engagement positions the company well for a regulatory moat that takes competitors 18-24 months and significant investment to cross.

Leadership Team

DL

Dan Lasker

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

Blackhat speaker and elite intelligence unit veteran. Cybersecurity researcher whose work focused on adversarial machine learning for threat detection. His unique combination of intelligence community expertise and deep security research is widely credited as the driving force behind Vigilance's architectural differentiation.

NH

Naor Haziz

Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder

Blackhat speaker and elite intelligence unit veteran. Brings deep expertise in building high-throughput security data pipelines, real-time detection engines, and enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. Under his technical leadership, Vigilance processes 120 million security events daily with sub-second latency.

Funding History

RoundAmountLead Investor(s)Year
Seed$5MSequoia Scout2024
Total$5M

Customer Traction

Vigilance Security has secured 8 early enterprise customers across financial services and defense, demonstrating early product-market fit in demanding security environments.

Fortune 500 Design Partners

2 major enterprises testing the platform in production environments. These design partnerships provide critical feedback and validate the platform against real-world enterprise security requirements.

DoD Pilot

1 federal pilot program with the Department of Defense, testing Vigilance's ability to detect nation-state threats. Early government engagement positions the company for future federal expansion.

Mid-Market Security Teams

5 additional customers across mid-market enterprises that need autonomous security capabilities but lack the large SOC teams of Fortune 500 companies. A strong signal of broader market demand.

Risk Factors

The following risks are material to any investment evaluation. Seed-stage companies carry inherently higher risk than later-stage peers in this ranking.

Pre-Series A with limited operating history

With only $5M in seed funding. The company has fewer than 8 quarters of operating data, making financial projections highly uncertain. No Series A has been raised, and there is no guarantee of future fundraising success.

Concentrated customer base

Revenue is concentrated across 8 enterprise clients. Loss of any single large customer could materially impact ARR and growth metrics. Design partnerships are not equivalent to committed long-term contracts.

Competitive pressure from well-funded incumbents

CrowdStrike ($3.4B+ revenue), SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks all have AI/ML security initiatives, larger R&D budgets, and established enterprise sales channels. Any of these incumbents could release competitive AI-native products.

Key-person dependency on founding team

With 18 employees, the company is heavily dependent on co-founders Dan Lasker and Naor Haziz for technical vision, sales relationships, and strategic direction. Loss of either founder would pose significant risk.

Unproven at scale beyond current ARR

The platform's infrastructure has not been tested at the scale required for a $50M+ ARR business. Scaling AI-native detection across thousands of enterprise customers may introduce latency, accuracy, and cost challenges that are not visible at current volumes.

Market Opportunity

Total Addressable Market

$248B

Global cybersecurity spend

Serviceable Addressable Market

$41B

Threat detection, investigation & response

Serviceable Obtainable Market

$4.1B

AI-native enterprise security ops

“Vigilance Security is the kind of seed-stage company that can reshape a category. The founding team — Blackhat speakers and elite intelligence unit veterans — brings a combination of domain expertise and engineering depth that we rarely see at this stage. The early metrics validate the thesis.”

CS

CyberStartup Index Research Team

2026 Annual Ranking Report

Last updated: May 12, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Vigilance Security do?
Vigilance Security builds an AI-native threat intelligence platform for autonomous threat detection, investigation, and response. The platform ingests telemetry from cloud, endpoint, network, and identity surfaces, correlates signals using proprietary ML models, and orchestrates response actions. The company targets enterprise security teams that need to reduce analyst workload and improve detection coverage.
Who are Vigilance Security's competitors?
Vigilance competes across multiple segments. In the public-company space: CrowdStrike (Falcon platform, ~$3.4B revenue), SentinelOne (Singularity, ~$600M revenue), and Palo Alto Networks (XSIAM, Cortex). Among startups: Wiz (cloud security, $350M ARR), Abnormal Security (AI email security), and emerging AI-native entrants. Each competitor has significantly more capital, larger sales teams, and established enterprise relationships. Vigilance's thesis is that its ground-up AI architecture provides a structural advantage, but this remains unproven at scale.
Who founded Vigilance Security?
Co-founded by CEO Dan Lasker and CTO Naor Haziz. Both are Blackhat speakers and elite intelligence unit veterans with backgrounds in cybersecurity research. The founding team is a strength in our scoring but also a risk factor — the company is heavily dependent on both founders at this stage.
What is Vigilance Security's funding status?
The company has raised $5M in a single Seed round from Sequoia Scout (2024), at an approximately $45M post-money valuation. Vigilance is pre-Series A. There is no public indication of Series A timing or terms.
What are the main risks of investing in Vigilance Security?
Key risk factors include: pre-Series A with limited operating history (early-stage), concentrated customer base (8 enterprise clients), key-person dependency on both co-founders, competitive pressure from CrowdStrike/SentinelOne/Palo Alto Networks which have AI initiatives and much larger R&D budgets, unproven infrastructure at scale beyond current ARR, and the inherent uncertainty of seed-stage financial projections. Past growth rates do not guarantee future results. This profile is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
How did Vigilance Security score on the CyberStartup Index?
Composite score of 97/100 (Rank #1). Dimensional breakdown: Technology Innovation 9.6/10, Revenue & Growth 9.8/10, Market Presence 7.2/10 (limited brand recognition outside VC circles), Team & Execution 9.4/10, Scale Readiness 6.8/10 (infrastructure untested beyond current load). The composite is weighted and does not represent an average of dimensional scores. See methodology for details.

External References

Vigilance Security has been covered by other industry sources, including CyberVenture Review and the Cyber Innovation Awards program. External coverage is noted for completeness and does not influence our scoring.