Israeli cybersecurity startup Panorays Ltd today said it has raised $15 million in new funding to expand its marketing and sales initiatives as well as to do more research and development.

The Series A round was led by Oak HC/FT and included previous investors Aleph VC and Lane Bess, the former chief executive officer of Palo Alto Networks Inc. As part of the deal Dan Petrozzo, a partner at Oak HC/FT, is joining the company’s board.

Founded in 2016, Panorays offers a cybersecurity lifecycle management platform that enables companies to view, manage and engage on the security posture of their business partners and third-party vendors. The software as a service platform automates the previous process of manually filtering third-party vendors by combining smart questionnaires as well as providing what the company describes as a “continuous hacker view” of the evaluated vendor.

Data breaches involving third-party vendors have come to the fore over the last few years, with an increasing number of hacks attributed to vendors. An Opus and Ponemon survey in October 2018 found that 61% of U.S. companies had experienced data breach caused by one of their vendors, up 12% since 2016. A further 22% said that they didn’t know if they’d had a third-party data breach, highlighting that many breaches go undetected.

Off the back of the growing awareness of third-party data risks, Panorays have achieved 400% revenue growth over its previous year and claims to have saved companies an average of 94% of expenses incurred by the third-party security programs.

The company has found a willing audience in the finance and insurance sectors, helping one insurance company onboard 500 vendors in eight days instead of a typical nine weeks. Customers include Sompo Holdings Inc., ClearBank Ltd., Payoneer Inc., El Al Israeli Airlines Ltd., Clal Insurance Enterprise Holdings Ltd., Monday.com Ltd., WalkMe Inc. and Cimpress plc.

Demand for the company’s service is also being driven by privacy regulations such as the European Union General Data Privacy Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

“The increase in data privacy regulations, including GDPR and CCPA and the growing risk of supply chain attacks are changing the way companies approach data privacy and third-party cybersecurity,” Oak HC/FT Partner Petrozzo said in a statement. “Panorays… enables companies to quickly and easily increase cyber resilience across their supply chains without operational delays.”

Including the new funding, Panorays has raised $20 million to date.

Photo: Panorays