Enterprise cybersecurity has become increasingly dependent on identity. As traditional network boundaries fade and organizations manage more applications, users and systems, identity and access management has emerged as a critical layer of security. Yet the technology that underpins IAM can be surprisingly difficult and expensive to put into practice.
As reported by Axios, Insight Partners and Glilot Capital are co-leading a $20 million investment in Way Security, a company founded by former security leaders Yossi Barishev and Yonatan Rosenberg. The company is taking aim at the operational work surrounding IAM, using an AI-powered, agentic platform to automate tasks that have traditionally required extensive consulting and engineering resources.
Way Security’s approach is not to replace the identity platforms enterprises have already purchased. Instead, the company is building software designed to help organizations deploy, manage and extend those existing investments across complex environments, addressing what it sees as one of the industry’s most persistent execution problems.
The IAM Market Has A Services Problem
For many organizations, the cost of IAM extends well beyond the software license. Way Security says enterprise IAM programs can run years past schedule and reach seven- or eight-digit costs while still delivering less than initially promised. Implementation, customization and ongoing operational services can cost three to five times more than the underlying software.
The result is a services-heavy market in which the ecosystem supporting IAM has grown larger than the software market itself. Way Security believes that dynamic creates an opportunity to automate the operational work that has historically been performed by consultants, system integrators and internal engineering teams.
The company uses AI-driven automation and agentic workflows to address activities such as identity lifecycle management, access governance, authentication and policy enforcement. Its platform is designed to apply identity controls across different systems without custom integrations, manual workflows or continuous reliance on application owners.
A Different Approach To Existing Identity Stacks
Rather than asking enterprises to replatform their IAM environments, Way Security is designed to work with the infrastructure they already own. The company says its technology can extend identity coverage to legacy, homegrown and custom applications that do not support standard federation protocols, connecting them to existing IGA, IdP and authentication controls.
“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.”
The company’s founders have direct experience with the challenges they are addressing. Barishev and Rosenberg have advised Fortune 500 organizations on complex identity initiatives and led enterprise security organizations. They also spent years leading incident response efforts involving significant cyber incidents, where weak identity controls repeatedly became a root cause or critical enabler of successful attacks.
Investors See Opportunity Beyond IAM Software
The $20 million investment from Insight Partners and Glilot Capital reflects a view that the opportunity in identity extends beyond selling another software platform. With implementation and operational services often costing several times more than IAM software, Way Security is targeting an opportunity tied to how organizations actually deploy and maintain their identity infrastructure.
“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.”
Insight Partners Co-Founder and Managing Director Jeff Horing said Way Security is addressing a persistent disconnect in the market. “Identity is one of the most critical layers of enterprise security, yet organizations still struggle to operationalize their investments efficiently,” said Horing. “Way Security is addressing a large and persistent gap between IAM software and real-world execution.”
Way Security says it is already working with Fortune 500 companies, global healthcare organizations and financial institutions. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its U.S. presence and continue investing in its identity operations platform, with the goal of establishing Way Security as a category leader in identity operations.
