Industry Luminary Dave DeWalt Joins as Strategic Advisor and UL Ventures as a Strategic Investor
SUNNYVALE , Calif. – August 7, 2018 – RiskSense®, Inc., the pioneer in intelligent threat and vulnerability prioritization, today announced it has closed a $12 million Series B round of financing co-led by Spring Mountain Capital and NightDragon Security, with participation from UL Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, Sun Mountain Capital, EPIC Ventures and Jump Capital. The funds will be used to accelerate growth through sales, marketing and research & development investments.
The RiskSense team has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community on applying artificial intelligence to cybersecurity problems as part of the CACTUS (Computational Analysis of Cyber Terrorism against the U.S.) project. Today the RiskSense threat and vulnerability prioritization platform is used by Global Fortune 500 customers, government agencies as well as one of the largest telecommunications providers in the world to deliver managed security services to businesses.
“Spring Mountain Capital invests in companies that are developing breakthrough technology innovations in high growth markets. RiskSense stands out in the cyber risk management sector because of its ability to identify and prioritize security blind spots, so companies can fix what matters most,” said Raymond Wong, Managing Director and Head of Growth Equity at Spring Mountain Capital. “We love the fact that RiskSense makes the security tools that companies already have more effective.”
Organizations are struggling with what to fix first out of the tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that could adversely affect their IT infrastructure. RiskSense provides clear remediation guidance to ensure that what is fixed actually reduces an organization’s overall risk. The RiskSense Security Score (RS3) provides CISOs and boards clear visibility into their temporal risk with a simple, credit-like score, as well as a framework to track and improve security over time.
According to a recent Gartner report: “‘I have 1,000 critical vulnerabilities, but I can only fix 100 this month. Which 100 do I prioritize?’ is a common question that IT security managers ask Gartner. In the past, this process has been tedious and time-consuming, as well as manual and error-prone. Going beyond the capabilities of a VA (vulnerability assessment) tool, threat and vulnerability management solutions are designed to support an organization’s vulnerability life cycle management, provide formalized workflow and report collaboration capabilities.”
“I’ve evaluated hundreds of security companies and what I admire most about RiskSense is their focus on addressing the one problem every organization faces – reducing risk by prioritizing the vulnerabilities that need immediate attention,” said Dave DeWalt, Founder of NightDragon and now a Strategic Advisor to the RiskSense Board of Directors. “Reducing IT risk is now a board-level topic, and RiskSense provides CEOs and their boards a solution and framework for reducing risk and continuously evaluating their risk assessment in business terms.”
“This new investment will allow us to take advantage of the enormous market opportunity for helping customers prioritize their risks. The funding will provide the resources we need to accelerate our business momentum and strengthen our technology advantage,” said Srinivas Mukkamala, Ph.D., CEO of RiskSense. “We are pleased to welcome Spring Mountain Capital to our board. Both Raymond Wong and Dave DeWalt will be invaluable advisors to our management team.”
Recently, the company has been named a finalist in the prestigious SC Awards in both the US and Europe, chosen as a Top Security Manufacturer in the United States in the Outstanding Security Performance Awards (OSPAs), and received a GSN Homeland Security Award and the Cybersecurity Excellence Award from GDS Review. The company continues to receive industry recognition for its innovations in intelligence-driven threat and vulnerability management, risk prioritization and analytics.
RiskSense will demonstrate its cybersecurity threat and vulnerability prioritization platform this week at Black Hat 2018 booth #L47 in Las Vegas.
*Gartner, Inc., Security Operations and Vulnerability Management Primer for 2018, by Kelly M. Kavanagh, Prateek Bhajanka, 1 February 2018.
About Spring Mountain Capital
Founded in 2001 by John L. (‘Launny”) Steffens and located in New York City, Spring Mountain Capital, LP (“SMC”) is a private investment management firm that focuses on alternative asset investing. SMC’s Growth Equity Group provides expansion stage capital to lower middle market companies that are capitalizing on breakthrough innovations, paradigm shifts, or fundamental market or behavioral changes. The Growth Equity Group at SMC focuses on two sectors of the U.S. economy undergoing the most change and with the highest growth potential: technology-enabled and healthcare businesses. Within these high growth areas, it seeks to make value investments by capitalizing on market dislocations, information asymmetry illiquidity and complexity. For more information, visit https://springmountaincapital.com.
About NightDragon Security
NightDragon Security is an investment firm focused on partnering with cybersecurity companies across the corporate lifecycle, from early stage, to growth, buyouts and special situations. Its flexible model allows it to lead or co-invest alongside leading venture capital and private equity firms in the pursuit of driving growth and maximizing shareholder value. NightDragon is unique in providing deep operational expertise in cybersecurity gained by its founders Dave DeWalt and Ken Gonzalez from years serving as senior executives leading technology companies such as Documentum, EMC, Siebel Systems (Oracle), McAfee, Mandiant, Avast and FireEye. For more information please visit https://nightdragon.com.
About UL Ventures
UL Ventures works with entrepreneurs and leading experts to develop solutions that ensure safety, security, sustainability and interoperability within new fields and technologies. The Ventures team provides capital, expertise and access to UL ecosystems so you can pursue innovation. For more information please visit https://ul.com/ventures