Data privacy compliance startup DataGrail Inc. today said it has raised $5 million in new funding to accelerate growth and meet increasing demands for a product it describes as privacy as a service.

The round was led by existing investor Cloud Apps Capital Partners and included participation from Okta Ventures, the fairly new venture capital fund set up in April by identity management software provider Okta Inc.

Founded in 2018, DataGrail offers a privacy management platform designed to ensure sustained compliance with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, California’s Consumer Protection Act and other emerging privacy laws and regulations.

Integrating with more than 100 applications and infrastructure systems, such as Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and Amazon Web Services, DataGrail’s service allows companies to discover, inventory and map personal data in seconds to reduce inefficiencies, eliminate error-prone processes and continuously comply with data privacy regulations.

Among its features, the DataGrail’s platform assists companies in understanding the complexities and requirements of each regulation; identify applications and systems, both internal and external, that hold regulated data; update compliance teams on applications and systems added; handle data privacy requests; manage customer email preferences across a company’s entire organization; and ensure compliance with any regulatory changes or new regulations.

“Most companies rely on dozens, if not hundreds, of cloud-based applications and it’s much too cumbersome and complicated to manually process privacy requests,” Daniel Barber, DataGrail’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Companies need a data privacy partner that can help them take an inventory of applications and solutions that may have data, map the data, then operationalize privacy requests.”

Since the introduction of the EU’s GDRP came into force in May 2018, other jurisdictions have either followed with similar new regulations or are proposing to do. Nevada is next with Senate Bill 220, amendments to existing online privacy laws going into effect in October, while California follows with its GRPRlike CCPA set to go into effect next year.

The cost of compliance with new state policies will not be known until they are implemented, but GDPR compliance has been costly. A report in May 2018 estimated that U.K. and U.S. businesses alone had spent $9 billion in attempting to be compliant with the regulation before its introduction. That figure doesn’t include ongoing compliance costs, which is where DataGrail steps in with its plug-in solution.

Including the new funding, DataGrail has raised $9.2 million to date.

Image: DataGrail