Xiid CEO On Cyber Innovation, Market Expansion & Funding

Xiid Corp., an organization specializing in cyber defense with zero-knowledge networking, recently received strategic funding after the release of SealedTunnel 4.0.

Channel Insider sat down with Xiid CEO Steve Visconti to discuss the funding impact and the SealedTunnel solution.

Solution passes DoD scrutiny, raises additional funding to support growth in channel

The solution earned a Department of Defense Authority to Operate (ATO). It also passed testing from the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB– confirming its “near invisibility” externally and alignment with Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) best practices for defense against internal attacks.

The funding is backed by Ventura Capital and complements Xiid’s partnerships with businesses, including multinational consulting and technology leader Capgemini. 

“We’re grateful for Ventura’s support,” said Visconti. “Their investment is a vote of confidence in our team and our mission. It gives us added momentum to continue our growth and deliver the level of cybersecurity organizations have been waiting for.”

The recent funding will help the organization focus on market expansion, R&D, and innovations, Visconti said, as well as continue their work through the channel.

“Our go-to-market strategy is the channel,” said Visconti. “We have a partnership with companies– the largest size would be Capgemini, as one example. We went through their Catalyst program, but we also work with value-added resellers and small contractors. It’s all channel-based.”

Zero knowledge: How Xiid is evolving zero-trust principles

The near invisibility of SealedTunnel helps to eliminate attack surfaces from a cybersecurity perspective. The solution works as an access method, Visconti says, eliminating discoverability, neutralizing known attacks, and making networks ”invisible” by turning off IP addresses and enabling process-to-process access.

“We were looking at the market and studying zero trust, and we realized that there was a lot of work to be done in that framework, given the current tool sets that we had that the industry was participating in,” Visconti said. “So we developed a network fabric we call zero-knowledge networking, and it overlays any IP-based network. It augments zero-trust principles and neutralizes. The idea is that it completely eliminates discoverability on the network, and it neutralizes all known attacks that we have today– that we know about today– including zero-day attacks or malware attacks and so forth.”

Post-quantum cryptography and other emerging threats also top of mind for Xiid, channel partners

Emerging cybersecurity threats are also at the forefront for Xiid. In terms of quantum security risks and network defense, Xiid already believes there is already a significant threat with harvest now, decrypt later attacks.

Visconti says he’s not sure CISOs currently understand that state actors are already taking data —encrypted or not —with the plan of decrypting it later once quantum computers are fast enough to break through encryption algorithms.

“We implemented the NIST standards for post-quantum cryptography within our product– so we have three layers of security encryption,” Visconti explained. “The inner middle layer and innermost layer are both post-quantum cryptographic secure. Our product was designed where we can make changes to the encryption as the market matures. We don’t invent the encryption, we take what we think are the best gold standards– in this case, we’re talking about NIST-approved post-quantum cryptographic methods– and we implement them in our product.”

Visconti said that Xiid is always focused on defeating the enemy, and that is core to the organization’s philosophy.

“There’s a real opportunity for the channel partners to take a look at what we’re doing. There’s a tremendous amount of value they can add in new designs, landing zones– tons of things that customers are beginning to look at,” said Visconti. “I would encourage them to take a look at what we’re doing because it runs a pretty broad gamut of how you can utilize the product from containers to AI.”

Quantum readiness is becoming more significant as quantum threats are accelerating. Read more about how cryptographic debt and agile PQC strategies are shaping the channel and impacting the future of cybersecurity.