Vendict Ltd., a startup helping tech firms demonstrate their products’ security to potential customers, launched today after two years in stealth mode. 

The Israel-based startup disclosed on the occasion that it has raised $9.5 million in venture funding. The investment was led by NFX, Disruptive AI and Cardumen Capital. NewFund Capital, Tuesday Capital, Cyber Club London and YL Ventures operating partner Andy Ellis contributed as well. 

Before a company purchases a software product, it must determine that the product meets cybersecurity requirements. To do so, the company’s information technology team sends the tech firm that developed the software a questionnaire about its security practices. Such documents often contain more than 100 questions about topics as varied as data encryption and GDPR compliance.

Because of their complexity, cybersecurity questionnaires can take weeks to answer in some cases. The more time is required to complete a questionnaire, the longer it takes for software makers to onboard new customers. Vendict has developed an artificial intelligence platform that it says can speed up the task by a factor of 50.

To use Vendict’s platform, a software maker must upload data detailing its internal cybersecurity practices. It automatically organizes the submitted data into a knowledge base. Each entry in the knowledge base comprises a question about a certain aspect of the company’s cybersecurity practices and the answer to that question.

Using the collected information, Vendict’s AI algorithms automatically answer the questionnaires that a software company receives from customers. The startup says its AI can answer questions about not only cybersecurity but also related topics. The platform could, for example, explain the steps a software maker takes to comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR.

Enterprises often share cybersecurity questionnaires with software suppliers through cloud-based survey services. Those services are usually accessed through a browser. To save time for its users, Vendict provides a Chrome extension that can automatically input AI-generated answers into browser-based questionnaires. 

The company also promises to improve users’ productivity in other ways. The startup’s AI models can only answer a cybersecurity question if they receive the necessary information beforehand. Its platform automatically detects if a company has uploaded an insufficient amount of information about a certain aspect of its cybersecurity operations and highlights the issue.

To help software makers track outstanding questionnaires, Vendict provides a project management dashboard. The dashboard lists the customer questionnaires that are awaiting a response and provides related information, such as each document’s due date.

Vendict claims its platform has saved more than 45,000 hours for customers since launch. The company says its installed base includes publicly traded enterprise software companies such as SimilarWeb Ltd. and Monday.com Ltd., as well as multiple venture-backed startups. 

Image: Vendict