Canadian VC Awz HLS Fund invests US $3 million in Israeli data privacy and protection start-up

Innovative start-up applies AI to protect sensitive information

TORONTO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Awz HLS Fund I, a pioneering Canadian venture capital fund, announced today a US $3 million investment in MinerEye, an Israeli start-up company in the field of data privacy and protection. MinerEye offers Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered information governance to automate the identification and tracking of non-compliant data in enterprise scale repositories and storage platforms. This investment completes MinerEye's first financing round at a total of US $3.6 million.

MinerEye's patent-pending technology fuses computer vision and machine learning to identify sensitive data patterns based on learning sets of exemplar files. MinerEye's Data Tracker™ product scans and clusters large on-premises data repositories as well as cloud repositories, and then tracks the data's behaviour to alert and trigger policy enforcement tools and report on non-compliant data.  The product is commercially available having already been installed in several large financial institutions in the US and Europe.

Yaron Ashkenazi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Awz HLS Fund I commented: "Organizations are now starting to deal with a growing number of challenges regarding data protection. MinerEye's technology provides a unique data management and protection solution to allow organizations to cope with the growing risks to organizational information and new regulatory requirements. Our investment in MinerEye is consistent with our early investments and focuses on companies that provide a significant, innovative and creative solution against threats in the business and public sectors through breakthrough technologies from the cyber, intelligence and physical security sectors".

This investment follows six other investments made by Awz HLS Fund I in Israeli hi-tech companies in the last 18 months. Recently, Awz HLS Fund I announced a US $4.5 million investment in NanoLock Security, an Israeli company specializing in cyber-shielded technology components for the IoT market. In 2017, AWZ HLS Fund I announced a US $3.5 million investment in SIGA Data Security, an Israeli company that develops cyber security technologies for critical control and operation systems in the operational technology (OT) space, as well as a US $5.25 million investment in Octopus Systems Ltd, an Israeli company that developed a cloud-based information platform that protects organizations from cyber and physical attacks.

Yaniv Avidan, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of MinerEye added: "Organizations are inundated with "Dark Data" - data that is typically unstructured, unidentified and unclassified. This dark data is continuously created, modified and stored during regular business activity, but later fails to be governed or reused according to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. MinerEye's Data Tracker™ technology ensures increased data control and compliance for companies facing the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our mission is to put data in order, and make it more protected, compliant and reusable."

About Awz HLS Investment Fund I LP:
Awz HLS Fund I is a groundbreaking Canadian cyber security and intelligence venture capital fund, founded by attorney Yaron Ashkenazi, a former Israel Security Agency (ISA) officer living in Toronto, Canada. The fund's executive team and advisory committee include a former public safety minister from Canada, former senior executives from Canadian and Israeli security and intelligence agencies, and global business and financial experts. The team includes Hon. Stockwell Day, former Canadian Public Safety Minister; Richard Fadden, former Canadian National Security Advisor to the PM and Director of CSIS; Lt. Gen. (Ret) Michael Day, former CAF Special Operations Forces Commander; Erez Kreiner, former Director of the National Information (Cyber) Security Authority under the ISA; Haim Tomer, former Head of the Mossad Intelligence Division; and Gary Barnea, the former Director of the ISA Protection and Security Division. Awz HLS Fund I will invest over US $30 million in Israeli companies that have developed cutting-edge cyber security, intelligence and physical security technologies. Awz HLS Fund I will also invest in establishing subsidiaries in North America in cooperation with several of its investee companies.

SOURCE AWZ HLS Investment Fund

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