Cognigo

Cognigo, established in 2016 and initially named D.Day Labs, operated in the data security and compliance sector, leveraging artificial intelligence to help organizations manage and protect sensitive information. The company was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, by Guy Leibovitz, a computer science graduate from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a background in cybersecurity who served as the company's CEO. His experience in the field highlighted the growing challenge for enterprises in maintaining visibility and control over their expanding data assets, which directly informed Cognigo's mission.

The firm positioned itself as a solution for navigating complex data privacy regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. It primarily served enterprises, with a client base that included top-tier banks, insurance companies, and media organizations worldwide. The business model centered on its proprietary platform, DataSense, which was sold to clients to automate data governance and security. By 2018, the company reported that its revenue was tripling almost every quarter, demonstrating rapid market adoption.

Cognigo's core offering, the DataSense platform, acted as a centralized control system for managing and securing critical data and personally identifiable information (PII). Utilizing advanced machine learning and cognitive computing, the platform could discover, classify, and contextualize both structured and unstructured data across on-premise servers and cloud services. A key feature was its ability to understand the context of data, allowing it to distinguish between sensitive information and non-sensitive mentions, a capability that set it apart from competitors. This automated process enabled companies to enforce security policies, orchestrate other security platforms, and generate audit trails for compliance purposes, significantly reducing the time required to become compliant from months to days.

The company's growth trajectory was marked by successful funding rounds, accumulating a total of $11 million. A notable Series A round in November 2018 raised $8.5 million, led by OurCrowd with participation from Prosegur and State of Mind Ventures. This momentum and technological alignment led to a partnership with NetApp, which culminated in Cognigo's acquisition by the data storage giant on May 27, 2019, for a reported $70 million. Following the acquisition, Cognigo's technology was integrated into NetApp's Cloud Volume ONTAP portfolio to provide an AI-driven compliance solution, and its 35-person team joined NetApp's Israeli development center.

Keywords: data governance, compliance management, data security, AI-driven compliance, personally identifiable information protection, GDPR compliance, unstructured data classification, data discovery, cognitive computing, machine learning data security, data protection platform, PII recognition, automated data governance, dark data, cybersecurity, enterprise data security, NetApp acquisition, Guy Leibovitz, DataSense