UPDATED 11:32 EDT / JULY 14 2016

NEWS

Silicon Valley and Wall St. giants shower $9M on risk analytics startup CyberGRX

Less than 24 hours after network protection provider Bay Dynamics Inc. closed a $23 million funding round, the security space is marking yet another high-profile investment. Denver-based risk analytics startup CyberGRX Inc. today announced that it’s raised $9 million from a group of investors consisting of some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

Among the most notable participants are Alphabet Inc.’s GV, the venture capital affiliate of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company and The Blackstone Group L.P., the world’s largest alternative investment firm. Moreover, the round also included contributions from cybersecurity big-wigs such as former NSA director Mike McConnell and Veracode Inc. CEO Bob Brennan. More than 10 backers chipped in altogether, which is quite extraordinary considering how CyberGRX doesn’t even have a product on the market yet. Yet its investors’ enthusiasm is entirely understandable.

The startup is working to address a security problem that affects almost every large organization yet has received little attention from vendors so far: Third party risk. Every time a company deploys a new sever, endpoint or software product, a new set of potential vulnerabilities is introduced into its network. A recent study from the Ponemon Institute revealed that nearly 49 percent of all enterprises experienced a vendor-related data breach in recent quarters. CyberGRX says that it’s working on a platform that will enable IT departments to automatically analyze the components of their infrastructure for vulnerabilities that might be exploited by hackers.

That’s similar to the value proposition of SecureScoreCard Inc., a vendor grading startup that raised $20 million last month in a round that also saw the participation of GV. Its offering is already used by more than 100 organizations around the world while CyberGRX only expects to have its platform ready by early 2017, but the latter outfit has a few cards up its sleeve.

For starters, CyberGRX says that its platform isn’t limited to analyzing vendors alone: The software will also be able to assess the risk that a company faces from partners and customers. Both groups often require access to sensitive systems or data that are potentially just as big of a target for hackers as a vulnerability in an internal application. The startup’s value proposition is underpinned by the credentials of its founders, namely former Bank of America Corporation CISO Pat Gorman, former American Express security veep Tony Urbanovich and NSA veteran Bryan Smith. The team will use the funding from today’s round to lay down the groundwork for their platform’s upcoming launch.

Image via Pixabay

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