Israeli startup, Huskeys, which has developed a new category of Internet security management - Edge Security Management (ESM), has emerged today from stealth and announced the completion of an $8 million seed financing round. The company is tackling one of the oldest but most neglected problems in the security world: the fundamental failure of the traditional Web Application Firewall (WAF), which still relies on outdated technologies that do not provide the level of connectivity, context and automation needed to keep up with today's dynamic application environment. Huskeys does not replace existing WAF systems but "lays" on them, providing for the first time transparency, context and control - an area where it currently has no direct rivals.
The company’s investors include leading funds such as ToDay (part of Merlin Ventures), 10D, SVAngel, CCL, Alumni Ventures and prominent angels from the worlds of network security and cybersecurity, including serial entrepreneurs Ariel Maislos, Benny Schneider and Ofer Ben Noon, Checkmarx founder Maty Siman, Ermetic founder Michael Dolinsky and the founders of Demisto. The investor group also includes dozens of CISOs from Fortune 500 companies, well-known athletes such as footballer Mario Gotze and NFL legend Larry Fitzgerald, as well as The Players Fund - an investment platform supported by the Premier League and international cultural stars, and an investment partner of Italian football clubs Juventus and Como.
Huskeys was founded in 2025 by Itai Gafni (CEO), and Roy Weisfeld (CTO), graduates of the IDF 8200 intelligence unit and although aged under 30 with rich experience in AI applications for solving complex problems. Gafni led innovative AI processes for the 8200 Unit while Weisfeld worked as a security researcher focusing on Internet attacks. The two met during their military service, and reconnected after being exposed during their civilian tech lives to the limitations of existing protection tools - and the gap between security solutions on the market and the operational reality of modern enterprises.
The company has about 20 employees, most of them in Israel, and plans to further expand the development and go-to-market team to support demand.
The WAF layer was invented and developed in Israel almost 30 years ago, as a response to the need to filter traffic for each application following the expansion of the Internet. However, since then, there have been hardly any changes to this product, and it has continued to operate in an almost identical format and technology for decades. Now, a product that upgrades and improves the old technology is finally coming out of Israel: Huskeys is introducing for the first time the ESM (Edge Security Management) platform - a unique and innovative technology that is in the process of registering a patent, which adds an Agentic AI layer based on the edge and WAF infrastructure in enterprises. The platform seamlessly integrates with any existing WAF, allowing security teams to continuously measure effectiveness, dynamically configure rules, and coordinate protection across multi-cloud and multi-WAF environments, without replacing existing infrastructure or changing application code. The result: optimal protection that ultimately balances security needs with business results.
Huskeys already has dozens of customers, including some of the world’s leading global brands such as Merlin Entertainments, Hugging Face, and TikTok. For one client, Huskeys’ platform identified an overly aggressive WAF rule set that was blocking legitimate consumers from completing purchases on an e-commerce site. Huskeys immediately recommended the exact rule changes needed to eliminate the false positives - thus preventing a potential loss of millions of dollars in revenue.
Huskeys’ platform already analyzes thousands of WAF rules and various network configurations every day across all the leading WAF vendors on the market, alongside over a trillion traffic requests flowing into the system from tens of thousands of domains worldwide.
"The beauty of Huskeys is that we provide the tool that every CISO has been wishing for for years, without forcing them to replace their existing infrastructure," explains Huskeys cofounder and CEO Itai Gafni. "The platform is built so that it can be easily integrated in minutes and generate value from it in just a few hours. For enterprises that derive most of their revenue from traffic to their websites, this is a real game changer that not only improves the level of security, but also generates more revenue for the organization."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 30, 2026.
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