Keep Aware Raises $2.4 Million to Eliminate the Browser Blind Spot with Human-Centric Security

Cybersecurity platform provides continuous protection against people-targeted attacks such as phishing and social engineering by securing the application where work lives, the web browser.

AUSTIN, Texas, June 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Keep Aware, the company pioneering a human-centric approach to browser security, today announced a $2.4 million round led by LiveOak Venture Partners, with participation from Runtime Ventures and prominent angel investors in the cybersecurity industry. Keep Aware will use this funding to accelerate product development and establish go-to-market programs, enabling it to support its growing customer base and keep up with surging demand.

"The web browser has become the new Operating System for most of our work, yet security teams have near zero visibility into what happens within it and employees continue to face a barrage of threats," explained Creighton Hicks, Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners. "Keep Aware is uniquely positioned to prevent attacks that leverage the browser. Their solution fills this visibility gap and provides an innovative approach to prevent sophisticated phishing and social engineering threats."

Keep Aware combines the analysis of how information is presented to people, and how they interact with it, to create a human-centric solution that prevents threats at the point-of-click. While traditional, technology-based security solutions are designed to prevent attacks from machine processes, events, and connections, Keep Aware focuses on threats that directly target people where they work, the web browser. Keep Aware embeds security directly into the user interface and operates in the considerable gray area where, without context, the risk level of any specific activity may be unclear. When a threat is detected, Keep Aware immediately involves both the employee and security team in its resolution by assessing intent and alerting them to suspicious and dangerous actions.  This inclusive process protects an organization in real time while also empowering employees to make more informed decisions in the future about security risks encountered in their daily work. Keep Aware deploys directly to industry-standard browsers, and integrates seamlessly into an employee's existing workflow.

"Keep Aware began with the realization that no matter how advanced our security technology became, or how strong a perimeter we could establish, threats still find a way to the user," said Ryan Boerner, CEO and Founder at Keep Aware.  "I began to understand that while a technology-based, perimeter-focused solution is still critically important, it was no longer sufficient. To effectively protect an organization in a continually evolving threat landscape, we have to better understand how people interface with technology, and the browser is the first key step."

Keep Aware's browser security platform has quickly become a top priority for organizations of all types and sizes, primarily due to the following reasons:

1. The browser is a blind spot to traditional security solutions, leaving the employee vulnerable to attack.  Typical threat detection technologies wrap around the browser, but don't effectively analyze what happens within.
2. As organizations adopt more SaaS and cloud services, the browser is increasingly becoming where employees do the majority of their work.  Information workers can spend 90% of their work day in a web browser accessing sensitive data and systems.
3. Bad actors know all this and have made the browser a primary attack vector.  Attacks are increasing in both velocity and sophistication.  Up to a third of all data breaches involve a web browser.  The proliferation of AI tools such as ChatGPT will lead to an even greater number of novel attacks.
4. Keep Aware offers a private and efficient method for comprehensive browser security.  By deploying directly to the browser and involving the user in the entire process, Keep Aware prevents both known and unknown threats from suspicious links, emails, social media, and browser extensions.

"Even with the latest network and email security solutions in place, we were still finding that user-facing threats were going undetected," said Le Lu, CIO of One Workplace.  "When we deployed Keep Aware, to over 700 people within minutes, the results were immediate.  As Keep Aware delivers real-time threat detection and prevention directly in the browser, it quickly enhanced the prevention of sophisticated phishing and social engineering attacks against our workforce, by detecting hundreds of threats and significantly reducing our team's time to investigate."

Keep Aware recognizes the crucial roles of both people and technology in security management, fostering a culture of shared responsibility and collective ownership throughout any organization. Key features and benefits include:

• Native Protection Against Credential Theft, Social Engineering, and Malicious Extensions
• Behavior-based Risk Identification
• Security at the Point of Click
• Automated Investigations
• Logging for Auditing and Compliance
• Direct Deployment to All Standard Web Browsers

About Keep Aware

Keep Aware is a pioneer in human-centric browser security.  Its platform eliminates the browser blind spot, ensuring complete visibility of browser activity and providing robust protection against known and unknown people-targeted attacks, including credential phishing, spoofing, social engineering, and malicious extensions.  Keep Aware combines the analysis of how information is presented to people, and how they interact with it, to create a human-centric solution that prevents threats at the point-of-click.  It leverages advanced user behavior analytics to assess risk, identify threats, and respond in real time to any attack. The powerful, lightweight solution seamlessly integrates into industry-standard browsers, protecting employees without disrupting workflow. To learn more, please visit: https://keepaware.com

About LiveOak Venture Partners
LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. With over 23 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $5 billion of enterprise value. While almost all of LiveOak's investments begin in the early stages, LiveOak is a complete life cycle investor focused on technology and technology-enabled service companies. With nearly $500M under management, LiveOak Venture Partners has led investments in 60 high-growth Texas-based companies, including DISCO (NYSE: LAW), Eventus, OJO Labs, AmplifAI, Homeward, Take Command Health, and Osano. Recognized as the Venture Capital Firm of the Year at the inaugural A-List awards by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, LiveOak is dedicated to supporting local founders, fostering the next generation of leaders, and building category-dominating companies.

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SOURCE Keep Aware