Neon Cyber announced its emergence from stealth and unveiled the first Workforce Cybersecurity Platform (WCP), delivering protection across browsers, SaaS applications and enterprise systems in every department.
Built by cybersecurity veterans with decades of experience, Neon was created to solve one of the industry’s most pressing problems, protecting people, not just technology, from threats like phishing, credential abuse and SaaS sprawl.
The company’s founders, Cody Pierce and Mark St. John, built and exited their first venture, AlphaWave, in 2021. Pierce serves as Neon’s CEO and brings deep offensive security research and product leadership experience from roles at ZeroFox, LookingGlass, Rapid7 and Endgame. Complementing that as COO, St. John has more than 20 years of defensive expertise, having led security operations, incident response, and product at enterprises including Verizon, LookingGlass and ZeroFox.
“We believe that securing the workforce is the missing piece in today’s cybersecurity technologies,” said Pierce. “For too long, organizations have invested heavily in infrastructure protection while leaving people exposed. Now, with Neon, employees can have a security expert built into their browser, stopping threats before they get serious.”
Sixty percent of breaches involve a human element, with stolen or misused credentials driving 22% of initial access, and phishing close behind at 16% despite decades of awareness training. The rapid adoption of SaaS and AI tools (often outside of IT’s purview) has created an urgent need for security that works with the user, however and wherever they work.
Neon’s WCP provides a missing enforcement layer between identity providers, anti-phishing email security tools and the user. The platform includes:
- AI-powered phishing protection with control and real-time response at the browser level, before a user clicks on a malicious link or misuses sensitive data
- Comprehensive shadow SaaS risk visibility and an intuitive SaaS Application Catalog, helping teams govern access, reduce sprawl and enforce policy without complicated integrations
- Behavior-based authentication governance and compliance in the browser, where users make decisions and take action
This allows security teams to reduce the SaaS attack surface, enforce identity hygiene and respond to risky behavior, without requiring complex integrations or forcing employees to use dedicated browsers.
“As part of our ongoing effort to identify and close security gaps, we recognized browsers as a critical blind spot,” Agnel D’Silva, Chief Technology Officer at City of Danville, IL, a user of the Neon platform, said. “Neon Cyber has given us the visibility and control we need to identify risks and strengthen our overall cybersecurity posture.”
Neon is already collaborating with organizations across industries, including healthcare with DocGo, energy with BP Energy, and state and local government with the City of Danville, IL, to protect their distributed workforces. The company has also established a strategic technology partnership with Elastic to enhance enterprise visibility and threat detection.
“Identity-based threats are no longer confined to email – they’re targeting users directly in browsers and SaaS applications,” said Michael Nichols, VP of Product at Elastic. “Together, Neon Cyber and Elastic Security deliver enterprise-wide protection that’s easy to deploy, giving organizations confidence their people, data, and applications are secure.”
“Hybrid work is here to stay, SaaS adoption is exploding and identity threats are escalating,” said St. John. “We built this company because we’re tired of the industry blaming the workforce – it’s time we actually protect them. We’re grateful for the design partners that have supported us up to this point in our journey and excited about the conversations we’ve started. As we embark on this next step, we look forward to defending organizations and users directly where work happens, instead of trying to build more fences.”
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