CybelAngel SAS, a startup that alerts enterprises when their sensitive business records show up on the open web, has raised $36 million in funding to bring its data leak detection technology to more markets.

The round, announced this morning, brings CybelAngel’s total raised to $52 million. A valuation was not provided.

Paris-based CybelAngel provides a cloud service that detects so-called third-party data breaches. Those are incidents in which a company’s records are exposed because a partner or some other external party with which it shares information mishandles the data.

That scenario has emerged as a major cause of concern for enterprises in recent years. In 2019, for instance, medical testing providers Quest Diagnostics Inc. and LabCorp had more than 20 million patients’ information compromised after a billing firm they worked with suffered a network breach.

CybelAngel’s service spots leaked data with a web scanning engine that scours the internet for exposed records. The startup claims that it maps out about a billion documents per day across websites, GitHub repositories, dark web marketplaces and connected devices, among many other sources. An artificial intelligence system aided by human analysts then inspects the content to see if there’s any sensitive information belonging to CybelAngel customers.

Through this approach, the startup claims to have helped enterprises avoid “billions of dollars’ worth of potential damage” from data leaks. CybelAngel can, for instance, detect if customer records entrusted to a partner firm show up on a hacker marketplace. The software also spots more subtle risks like if an employee saves work-related passwords on a private storage drive that can be accessed via the web.

CybelAngel’s technology is used by large organizations such as Air France, Danone S.A. and pharmaceutical giant Sanofi S.A. The startup said it will use the new $36 million round to extend its customer base to more markets worldwide. 

“This funding enables CybelAngel to expand globally to more countries and continue to innovate to protect enterprises’ most critical digital assets from costly data leaks,” CybelAngel Chief Executive Officer Erwan Keraudy said in a statement. “It will also support our expansion in North America where the demand for digital supply chain protection and third-party risk management is growing exponentially.”

The round was led by Prime Ventures with participation from more than a half-dozen other backers, many of them angel investors. Among them were Olivier Pomel and Alexis Le-Quoc, co-founders of newly public monitoring provider Datadog Inc., and Tenable Inc. Chief Technology Officer Renaud Deraison. 

An entire ecosystem of startups has emerged to focus on combating security risks from third-party data breaches. RiskRecon Inc., another player in this market, was recently acquired by Mastercard Inc., while last year fellow contenders CyberGRX Inc. and Securityscore Inc. raised $40 million and $50 million, respectively, in the former case through a round led by Iconiq Capital. 

Photo: CybelAngel