Quick Heal Technologies, an IT security and data protection solutions provider, has announced an investment of $2 million in L7 Defense, an Israel-based cybersecurity startup.

The startup specialises in Application Programme Interface (API) security and next-generation web application firewall (NG-WAF). Quick Heal had already invested $3,00,000 in the startup last year.

Quoting a Gartner report, Quick Heal said about 90 per cent of web-enabled applications would be exposed to cyber-attacks due to the chinks in API weaknesses in 2021.

“This will be up from 40 per cent of the apps that were exposed in 2019. Hence, API security has become one of the top cybersecurity concern for enterprises,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

The Israeli startup’s AI-enabled Ammune technology protects a range of attacks targeting APIs. The list of attacks include Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS), bot attacks (deployment of automated requests to attack APIs, websites, applications) and other malicious threats.

“This is our third investment in the last 18 months. Besides two tranches of investments into L7 Defense, we had recently invested in Singapore based Ray Pte,” Kailash Katkar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Quick Heal Technologies, said.

He said the investment would help Seqrite, Quick Heal’s venture to support enterprise security, to foray into application security.