As reported by Axios, Insight Partners and Glilot Capital have co-led a $20 million investment in Way Security, a company building software to automate the operational work behind identity and access management, or IAM. The Tel Aviv-based startup was founded by Yossi Barishev and Yonatan Rosenberg, two security veterans who set out to fix a problem they had both experienced firsthand from inside large enterprises.
Axios first reported the deal, noting the scale of the round and the pedigree of its backers. Insight Partners and Glilot Capital are betting that identity, long treated as a back-office function, has become one of the most consequential and least efficient categories in enterprise security.
The Investment
Way Security’s platform uses AI-driven automation and agentic workflows to execute the operational tasks traditionally performed through costly consulting engagements. The goal is to let enterprises operationalize IAM investments they have already made, faster, more consistently, and at a fraction of the cost of hiring outside implementation teams.
The investment reflects a broader recognition that IAM remains one of the most disruption-ready spaces in cybersecurity despite years of attempted innovation elsewhere. It stays heavily service-dependent even as the technology around it has advanced.
Why Investors Are Betting on Identity
As AI-driven attacks accelerate and traditional network perimeters continue to disappear, identity has become the primary control plane for enterprise security. IAM programs, meanwhile, continue to suffer from slow deployments, high implementation costs, and heavy dependence on professional services.
“Identity is one of the most critical layers of enterprise security, yet organizations still struggle to operationalize their investments efficiently,” said Jeff Horing, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Insight Partners. “Way Security is addressing a large and persistent gap between IAM software and real-world execution.”
For Insight Partners and Glilot Capital, the opportunity extends past the traditional IAM software market. Implementation and operational services often cost organizations three to five times more than the software itself, which means the market the founders are targeting is significantly larger than IAM licensing alone.
Founders With Firsthand Experience
Barishev and Rosenberg spent years advising Fortune 500 organizations through some of their most complex identity initiatives and led enterprise security organizations from within, giving them direct insight into why IAM programs stall despite significant technology investment. Both also led incident response efforts for organizations facing major cyber incidents, repeatedly observing how weak identity controls became the root cause or critical enabler of successful attacks.
Rosenberg additionally served as an officer in Israel’s Unit 8200, adding an offensive security perspective to the team’s operational and defensive background.
“IAM is the only space in cyber where overspending and under-delivering is an acceptable reality,” said Barishev, co-founder and CEO of Way Security. “The more time we spent doing IAM, the more we realized how the industry normalized mediocrity and has almost given up trying to solve some of its biggest challenges.”
How the Platform Works
Unlike vendors that require organizations to replace or replatform their IAM systems, Way Security’s platform automates the operational tasks required for identity teams to fully deploy, manage, and maintain the systems they already have. It applies identity controls uniformly across every type of identity and system without custom integrations, manual workflows, or ongoing dependence on application owners.
“Most IAM teams aren’t looking to replace the platforms they’ve already invested in,” said Rosenberg, co-founder and CTO. “They’re looking to finally get the return on investment they were promised. We built Way Security to automate the work that has traditionally stood between buying an IAM platform and actually realizing its value.”
Early Traction and What Comes Next
Way Security is already working with enterprise customers across multiple industries, including Fortune 500 companies, global healthcare organizations, and financial institutions, to accelerate IAM deployments and extend coverage across complex environments.
The company plans to aggressively expand its U.S. presence as organizations increasingly prioritize identity as the foundation of modern cybersecurity, with ambitions to establish itself as the category leader in identity operations.
