Material Security tackles an email security problem that most vendors ignore entirely: the massive trove of sensitive data sitting in everyone’s inboxes. Founded in 2017 in San Francisco by Abhishek Agrawal and Ryan Noon, the company recognized that email archives contain years of passwords, financial data, customer information, and corporate secrets — all accessible to anyone who compromises an account. Traditional email security focuses on blocking threats at the gateway. Material focuses on protecting what’s already there.
The platform automatically discovers and classifies sensitive content across an organization’s mailboxes, then applies protection policies — redacting sensitive information, requiring additional authentication to view certain messages, or alerting security teams when someone accesses high-risk content. If an attacker compromises an executive’s email account, they can’t just rummage through years of messages containing passwords, contracts, and financial details. Material also provides phishing protection and account takeover detection.
Material Security has raised over $100 million in venture funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Foundation Capital. The company’s customer base includes high-profile technology companies and financial institutions where email archives represent a particularly rich target for attackers. The data-at-rest approach resonates with security teams that have already invested in gateway protection but recognize that their existing mailboxes remain a massive, unprotected attack surface. As regulatory scrutiny around data protection intensifies, Material’s ability to identify and secure sensitive content in email becomes increasingly relevant.
