The rise in a new-generation of threats like the cyberespionage campaign China-linked hackers are seemingly waging against top U.S. corporations has helped catapult the need to modernize data center security practices to the top of the enterprise agenda. But in focusing on the backend systems that have been the most common target of such attacks, the discussion largely overlooks the endpoints through which users access the information inside. 

That’s what SentinelOne Inc. hopes to change with the help of a $25 million capital infusion from investors announced this morning that will fund increased marketing and additional features for its enterprise antivirus. The software combines the effective but limited signature-based detection capabilities of traditional alternatives with a patent-pending analytics technology that distinguishes threats based on behavior.

That means that SentinelOne doesn’t need to have a particular virus registered in its database to make an identification. As a result, its platform is able to detect sociated zero-day attacks that exploit that exploit unknown vulnerabilities in workers’ applications, which represent one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of state-sponsored hackers.

SentinelOne’s software automatically blocks processes that meet one of the roughly 160 built-in criteria for malicious behavior and notifies the administrators immediately afterwards. While essential anytime business information is at risk, the ability to quickly identify and react to a breach is particularly important when it comes to the advanced persistent threats the startup is focusing on, which often involve multiple coordinated attacks on different parts of an organization.

SentinelOne’s value proposition has already won over customers such as Visa Inc. and Box, a roster that the new capital should help expand considerably. The round saw contributions from all of the startup’s existing investors as well as SineWave, a fairly new early-stage fund specializing in enterprise technology that was founded by a New Enterprise Associates partner last year.

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