Dive Brief:
- Cybersecurity threat assessment startup UpGuard announced a $17 million Series B fundraising round on Thursday, according to a Fortune report.
- The company said it currently has about 100 customers, including ADP, Home Depot, Cisco and the New York Stock Exchange.
- UpGuard's technology includes a tool that uses the internet to appraise a company's external digital risk. Its other primary product looks inside a company to determine and rate its internal system configutation and software.
Dive Insight:
UpGuard considers about 2,000 publicly available data points — such as whether or not the company keeps it software up to date and uses encryption — to determine a company’s score.
The goal of UpGuard’s tool is to provide a way to communicate risk in a consistent fashion, said Mike Baukes, co-founder and co-CEO. The company produces FICO-like scores that indicates how vulnerable a network is to attacks.
UpGuard first introduced their assessment tool in January and said it would enable insurance carriers to make smarter underwriting decisions and will also improve availability of cybersecurity insurance policies for businesses.
The cybersecurity insurance market has shown steady growth in both the U.K. and the U.S. over the last year. A recent Wells Fargo survey of 100 U.S. middle-market and large companies found 85% have purchased cyber and data privacy insurance. Globally, the cyber insurance market could reach $7.5 billion by the end of the decade, according to a report by PwC.
