Security fusion startup HiveWatch secures funding

LOS ANGELES—HiveWatch, a startup that uses multisensor fusion to help companies better respond to physical security threats, emerged from stealth and announced a seed funding round led by CrossCut Ventures, with participation from Freestyle and SaaS Ventures.

HiveWatch’s platform pulls data from a company’s disparate monitoring systems and security sensors to provide operators a single-pane-of-glass to evaluate and respond to alerts. By centralizing event data, HiveWatch reduces the security program noise that plagues operations, using multi-sensor analysis and machine learning to only elevate events that require a human response.

With years of experience building comprehensive security programs for both unicorn startups and Fortune 500 enterprises, HiveWatch CEO and Founder, and Security Systems News Class of 2020 “40 under 40” winner, Ryan Schonfeld, is addressing the biggest common challenge in building a state-of-the-art global security operations center.

“We’re building a platform to make security leaders more aware, more connected, more proactive, and more informed,” said Schonfeld. “Noise from the wide range of legacy sensors that exist within most companies’ security infrastructure is only addressed by hiring more people to process the data, resulting in a reactionary security program yielding minimal return on investment. The overarching vision of HiveWatch is to help the security leaders we talk to every day gain the intelligence needed to make their teams more effective.”

HiveWatch reduces 90 percent of the noise that plagues operations centers on a daily basis and allows operators to evaluate the remaining threats as fast as possible. Instead of operators switching between each sensors’ proprietary software to manually gather situational data, HiveWatch empowers operators by presenting all significant event feeds in one window as an alert comes in.

HiveWatch is made up of top technical talent from Apple, Bird, Cisco, Disney, and NORAD; combining security expertise in advanced military operations knowledge with high-growth technology startup execution. HiveWatch Head of Product Jordan Hill previously led multiple teams at Bird to develop machine learning solutions to contextualize hardware and software data for internal safety operations, sidewalk detection, and asset recovery that returned millions of dollars in capital investments and revenue globally.

“We were attracted to the background of this founding team, and their history and experience in scaling corporate security systems for high-growth companies like Bird,” said Crosscut Co-Founder and Managing Director Brian Garrett. "Ryan and Jordan have figured out how to bring interoperability and visibility into an antiquated software and hardware ecosystem. Their approach will make corporate security programs more accessible for both high-growth startups and Fortune 500 enterprises as we enter a post-Covid, data-driven paradigm.”

HiveWatch is directing their funding to expand their team with new and diverse leaders and engineers to accelerate feature releases and onboarding customers from their waitlist.

“Interoperability has been a problem in physical security since I started my career more than 30 years ago,” said Ron Rothman, former president of Honeywell Security and a HiveWatch advisor. “The nature of products available today has made scaling security cumbersome. With HiveWatch, you can build scalable and efficient programs by sensemaking and reducing noise across disparate security sensors.”

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