Immuta raises $8 million to facilitate secure data science

Immuta, an information governance platform that integrates data sources for data scientists, announced today a round of $8 million in funding.

With cybersecurity hacks looming and data regulations becoming increasingly stringent, data analysis can get tricky. Immuta gives admins privacy and control over data while allowing data scientists to use machine learning on data. The software can be deployed on any infrastructure, whether on premises, in the cloud, or a mixture of the two.

The College Park, Maryland-based startup has developed a sandbox that is 100 percent secure and non-destructive to the original data set, according to a spokesperson. “Data-driven companies are collecting data at an exponential rate in an attempt to better understand their customers and offer enhanced services,” Immuta chief executive Matthew Carroll said in a statement. “Data is their biggest advantage, but it’s also their biggest risk. We de-risk the innovation process.”

The product, which is sold on a subscription-based pricing model, supports various data sources, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3, SQL and NoSQL databases, and the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). The startup wouldn’t disclose how many customers it has, but did say it does business with national security organizations, telecommunications providers, and financial services companies. One customer the startup did disclose is GE.

Immuta competes with Collibra and Talend, a spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.

Drive Capital led this latest round, with participation from Greycroft Partners and Conversion Capital, bringing the startup’s total funding to $9.5 million to date. The new money will be used to expand the marketing team and further product development.

Founded in 2014, Immuta currently has 24 employees.