Latest news with #Reco
Euronews
3 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Sánchez, Feijóo trade corruption allegations in parliamentary session
The first parliamentary session in Spain since a top aide of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was implicated in a corruption scandal took place on Wednesday. The session quickly turned chaotic with various lawmakers calling on Sánchez to resign as political pressure mounts against him. People's Party (PP) lawmakers banged their seats and shouted "Resignation, resignation!" The scene orchestrated by Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, who left the chamber without listening to Sánchez, and staring at him with contempt as he passed by. 'You are indecent. And not even your supporters have any doubt about that. All of Spain knows it. You are corrupt and a traitor,' said Abascal before leaving the chamber. The Spanish premier chose to deploy an offensive tactic as he referenced corruption cases linked with other parties. Sánchez spoke of the Gürtel case, which implicated hundreds of PP officers, some who subsequently resigned, with corruption, including bribery, money laundering and tax evasion. The PP parliamentary caucus erupted and the situation quickly turned chaotic, with Parliament Speaker Francina Armengol struggling to control the session. 'You are a president deeply trapped in a corruption scheme. No matter how much you disguise it, you are not the victim. The victims are the Spanish people,' said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, President of the PP. 'You came to say you won't call elections because you would lose them. You don't have to save the Spanish people from themselves; the Spanish people have to save themselves from you, and they await your resignation letter,' he added. Sánchez then said that the only thing he's going to address are the PP corruption cases, which are set to be tried in the coming months. Sánchez has completely changed his tone, moving from last week's apology to a coordinated offensive against the opposition PP and Vox. The Spanish leader believes they lack the legitimacy to speak about corruption given their serious graft cases. The difference, as Sánchez notes, is that the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) acts as soon as there are signs, while the PP and Vox cover up corruption. Sánchez attempted to steer the session away from the PSOE's corruption case, but to no avail. The last few days have been very tense since audio recordings were released by Spanish police last week. The tapes confirmed that the third highest ranking PSOE official who's since resigned, Santos Cerdán, was involved in an illegal scheme which saw him take kickbacks in return for awarding public work contracts. Cerdan has denied any wrongdoing. The European Parliament called on Wednesday for an extra one-and-a-half years to continue spending money under the EU's €650 billion post-pandemic plan, Next GenerationEU. The resolution, drafted by Romanian MEPs Victor Negrescu and Siegfried Mureşan, was adopted by 421 votes to 180, and with 55 abstentions. It stressed the need to ensure that key investments financed by the plan's so-called Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) reach the finish line before the deadline foreseen in August 2026. It proposed time extensions should apply only to projects that are already well underway and likely to succeed with additional time. Lawmakers also warned that the limited time remaining to allocate and implement the remaining RRF resources poses serious obstacles to completing critical reforms, large-scale investments, and innovative programs in some countries. With around 70% of objectives and milestones still unmet, MEPs urged the European Commission to consider setting up successor mechanisms that are both adaptive and forward-looking, while providing a stable framework for replace the plan to guarantee continued investment. 'Critical investments risk being left unfinished after the end of the Facility in August 2026. I called for an extension of funding of 18 months for mature projects and demanded that unfinished projects can continue under other EU instruments such as the cohesion funds, InvestEU, or a future Competitiveness Fund,' said Socialist MEP Victor Negrescu, co-rapporteur on behalf of the Parliament's Committee on Budgets. 'Today, the Parliament is sending a clear message: we stand by the citizens and fight for the finalisation of essential projects.' According to the resolution adopted by the Parliament, the RRF has been vital in preventing economic fragmentation within the EU's single market while spurring post-pandemic recovery. Looking forward, they call for targeted investment in areas such as defence, education, and high-speed cross-border transport infrastructure, while encouraging member states to revise their national investment strategies, in order to enhance the EU's energy independence. 'We are calling for a review of how unspent RRF funds can support Europe's new strategic priorities, notably strengthening competitiveness and reinforcing our defence capabilities. In the face of rising geopolitical tensions, Europe must act decisively to defend its citizens," stated European People's Party's MEP Siegfried Mureşan, who is co-rapporteur for the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.
Business Mayor
22-04-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Cloud security startup Reco raises $25M in funding
Recolabs Inc., a startup that helps companies secure their software-as-a-service applications, has closed a $25 million funding round to enhance its technology. The investment was announced today. It included the participation of Insight Partners, Zeev Ventures, boldstart ventures, Angular Ventures and Redseed. Rico claims the cash infusion follows a year in which its annual recurring revenue grew fivefold. Before a company can check that its employees' SaaS applications are secure, it has to find those applications. That's not always straightforward because workers often subscribe to cloud services without the information technology team's knowledge. Reco provides a platform that can automatically map out employees' SaaS applications to save time for IT teams. After identifying the cloud services that are used in an organization, Reco scans them for cybersecurity issues. It uses a collection of artificial intelligence agents to carry out the task. According to Reco, its AI can spot if some of the employee accounts in a SaaS application has access to more business data than strictly necessary. The platform also identifies login credentials that aren't actively used. In the event of a breach, hackers can exploit unused and misconfigured accounts to steal data that otherwise wouldn't be accessible. User accounts aren't the only source of risk in SaaS environments. A growing number of SaaS applications include generative AI features such as customer support chatbots. In the event of a configuration issue, an embedded AI tool might make sensitive data entered by one user accessible to other customers. Reco says its platform can detect such AI data leaks, as well as integrations through which a SaaS application might leak information to other cloud workloads. In addition to detecting cybersecurity issues, the software spots attempts by hackers to exploit those issues. It can identify unusual data access patterns that suggest an employee account may have been compromised. Reco provides a natural language description of potential breaches, as well as a timeline of the cybersecurity events associated with each incident. The company's platform doubles as a compliance tool. Companies can use it to check whether their SaaS environments adhere to regulations such as the GDPR privacy regulation. To ease the task, Reco provides several hundred prepackaged detection controls, automated workflows that spot issues as misconfigured security settings. 'The adoption of AI apps and agents has made SaaS security more complex and dynamic than ever,' said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ofer Klein. 'Combine this with the proliferation of SaaS apps including shadow apps, and we're seeing a growing gap between the reality of the ecosystem and what legacy SSPM tools can provide.' Reco will use its new capital to enhance the AI agents that power its platform and add support for more SaaS applications. In conjunction, the company will establish more channel partnerships to boost sales. Image: Unsplash
Business Insider
22-04-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
AI cybersecurity agent startup Reco just raised $25 million from Insight Partners
The startup told Business Insider exclusively that it secured a $25 million Series A extension from Insight Partners, Zeev Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, Angular Ventures, and Redseed. The startup originally raised a $30 million Series A in 2022, led by Insight and Zeev. In total, Reco's has raised $55 million from VCs. Investors are clamoring to back AI security startups following Google's historic $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity startup Wix. Founded in 2020 by Ofer Klein, Gal Nakash, and Tal Shapira, Reco is working to fix the "SaaS security gap," which Klein, the startup's CEO, explains is the gap that exists between a company's existing cybersecurity protections and the rapidly advancing tech — which, these days, is mostly AI — that employees are using, often without proper oversight. To solve the problem, he linked up with co-founders Nakash, who previously headed up research at the Office of the Prime Minister in Israel, and Shapira, a machine learning ph.D. who also worked in Israel's Office of the Prime Minister. Klein is based in Orlando, while Nakash and Shapira both live in Tel Aviv, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Klein explained that the market has undergone a huge change during the last few years. Most companies have changed their policies from banning employees from using AI tools in the workplace to embracing them. "AI and gen-AI agents are amazing for the business and not something you can block anymore," he said. "Banks, insurance companies, and healthcare are all starting to adopt it, but the only way to adopt it is to have the right visibility and security for it." That's where Reco comes in. The startup helps companies keep their cloud apps safe — especially ones that employees use without telling IT, like a random tool they download and try out. As enterprises rely more and more on apps, it's easy to lose track of who's using what, which can open the door to security risks. Reco's AI finds the apps, monitors how they're being used, and flags risks before they become big problems. Klein added that Reco has spent the last two and a half years building AI agents that can quickly understand and fix app issues. The AI agents are trained on Reco metadata rather than customer data, making them faster and more secure than competitors on the market. "We could foresee an AI revolution, and having thousands of AI applications is amazing, until you get to the problem of, 'I'm a security expert, and I don't have any visibility'," Klein said. "Our vision has been to empower teams and enable businesses so that security feels like innovation." Reco is one of many startups using AI to help enterprise customers beef up their cybersecurity offerings. Tel Aviv-based Torq, a no-code security platform, raised a $70 million Series C funding round in 2024 led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners. 7AI, which is building a "swarm" of AI cybersecurity agents, launched from stealth in 2024 with a $36 million seed round led by Greylock. And Astrix Security, which uses AI agents to shield enterprise customers from cyberattacks, raised a $45 million Series B in 2024 led by Menlo Ventures.
Business Insider
22-04-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
AI cybersecurity agent startup Reco just raised $25 million from Insight Partners
Reco, which uses generative AI and AI agents to provide businesses with an SaaS security platform, just raised more funding. The startup told Business Insider exclusively that it secured a $25 million Series A extension from Insight Partners, Zeev Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, Angular Ventures, and Redseed. The startup originally raised a $30 million Series A in 2022, led by Insight and Zeev. In total, Reco's has raised $55 million from VCs. Investors are clamoring to back AI security startups following Google's historic $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity startup Wix. Founded in 2020 by Ofer Klein, Gal Nakash, and Tal Shapira, Reco is working to fix the "SaaS security gap," which Klein, the startup's CEO, explains is the gap that exists between a company's existing cybersecurity protections and the rapidly advancing tech — which, these days, is mostly AI — that employees are using, often without proper oversight. To solve the problem, he linked up with co-founders Nakash, who previously headed up research at the Office of the Prime Minister in Israel, and Shapira, a machine learning ph.D. who also worked in Israel's Office of the Prime Minister. Klein is based in Orlando, while Nakash and Shapira both live in Tel Aviv, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Klein explained that the market has undergone a huge change during the last few years. Most companies have changed their policies from banning employees from using AI tools in the workplace to embracing them. "AI and gen-AI agents are amazing for the business and not something you can block anymore," he said. "Banks, insurance companies, and healthcare are all starting to adopt it, but the only way to adopt it is to have the right visibility and security for it." That's where Reco comes in. The startup helps companies keep their cloud apps safe — especially ones that employees use without telling IT, like a random tool they download and try out. As enterprises rely more and more on apps, it's easy to lose track of who's using what, which can open the door to security risks. Reco's AI finds the apps, monitors how they're being used, and flags risks before they become big problems. Klein added that Reco has spent the last two and a half years building AI agents that can quickly understand and fix app issues. The AI agents are trained on Reco metadata rather than customer data, making them faster and more secure than competitors on the market. "We could foresee an AI revolution, and having thousands of AI applications is amazing, until you get to the problem of, 'I'm a security expert, and I don't have any visibility'," Klein said. "Our vision has been to empower teams and enable businesses so that security feels like innovation." Reco is one of many startups using AI to help enterprise customers beef up their cybersecurity offerings. Tel Aviv-based Torq, a no-code security platform, raised a $70 million Series C funding round in 2024 led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners. 7AI, which is building a "swarm" of AI cybersecurity agents, launched from stealth in 2024 with a $36 million seed round led by Greylock. And Astrix Security, which uses AI agents to shield enterprise customers from cyberattacks, raised a $45 million Series B in 2024 led by Menlo Ventures.
