Our investment in Tines.io: Levelling up security operations through automation
At Accel, we were early to invest in enterprise automation, backing UiPath, Celonis, and many others at the Series A. The value this technology brings by eliminating repetitive, mundane tasks and enabling workers to focus on higher-value work is significant. Function by function, we’ve seen rapid adoption of automation across the enterprise - and security is no exception.
Enterprise security teams today are faced with a challenging operating environment. This is driven by a proliferation of alerts coupled with a shortage of talent and fragmented processes. Teams are overwhelmed by repetitive, routine tasks, which can slow response time to the most pressing incidents and lead to staff fatigue and burn-out. Automation has now become a ‘must-have’ tool to make security operations more effective and sustainable.
As early backers of Demisto (recently acquired by Palo Alto Networks), we had a front-row seat to the creation of the Gartner defined category: Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR). Demisto has been a key protagonist in the SOAR narrative, elevating the importance of these tools and the buying decision within enterprise security teams. We believe this market is primed for growth, so today we’re excited to announce our Series A investment into Tines.
Similar to other SOAR tools, Tines gathers intelligence from disparate systems to enable security operations teams to enrich and triage alerts, and ultimately respond to incidents more effectively and expeditiously. However, Tines was architected to be extremely easy to use - no development skills required, and incredibly flexible. This allows teams to create automation stories that mirror even the most nuanced processes within their enterprise.
Tines launched its product less than a year ago and has already signed up some of the most security-savvy enterprises in the world as customers, including Auth0, Box, and McKesson. While security operations is the insertion point, Tines’ flexible architecture means that it can easily be extended to functions outside of security. Their customer uses cases already span IT, DevOps, and HR.
The two founders, Eoin and Thomas, spent more than a decade as security practitioners, having built the security operations teams at eBay and DocuSign. When I first met them, I was immediately struck by how deeply they’d thought through the product. It is clearly a security tool built by practitioners, for practitioners - the product they wish they’d had in previous roles.
We believe SOAR as a category is just getting started, and Tines’ product positions them well to quickly become a household brand in the space. We’re thrilled to be joining them on this journey!
