Detectify raises additional €21M for its ethical hacker network
0Reported today on TechCrunch
For the full article visit: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/25/detectify-raises-additional-21m/
Detectify raises additional €21M for its ethical hacker network
Detectify, the Sweden born cybersecurity startup that offers a website vulnerability scanner powered by the crowd, has raised €21 million in further funding.
Leading the round is London-based VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Paua Ventures, Inventure and Insight Partners.
Detectify says the new funding will be used to continue to hire "world-class" talent to further accelerate the company's growth and deliver on its mission to reduce internet security vulnerabilities.
Founded in late 2013 by a self-described group of "elite hackers" from Sweden, the company offers a website security tool that uses automation to scan websites for vulnerabilities to help customers (i.e. developers) stay on top of security. The more unique part of the service, however, is that it is in part maintained - or, rather, kept up to date - via the crowd in the form of Detectify's "ethical hacker network".
As we explained when the startup raised its €5 million Series A round, this sees top-ranked security researchers submit vulnerabilities that are then built into the Detectify scanner and used in customers' security tests. The clever part is that researchers get paid every time their submitted module identifies a vulnerability on a customer's website. In other words, incentives are kept aligned, giving Detectify a potential advantage and greater scale compared to similar website security automation tools.
Detectify co-founder and CEO Rickard Carlsson tells me the company has made a lot of progress in the past 12 months, including building out the crowdsourcing part of its proposition in order to grow the number of known vulnerabilities.
"Modules from crowdsourcing