RiskIQ raises $30.5 million to use machine learning to assess security risks

RiskIQ, a startup with a new kind of security technology, has raised $30.5 million in a third round of funding.

Georgian Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors Summit Partners, Battery Ventures, and MassMutual Ventures. RiskIQ notes that threats outside the firewall are vast and dynamic, so the company provides clients with access to the widest range of security intelligence and applications necessary to understand exposures and how to take action. RiskIQ is one of many companies currently applying machine learning to security.

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The San Francisco-based company will use this capital to expand its platform, sales, and digital risk applications. Similar to Google, RiskIQ applies machine learning and data science to continuously improve platform intelligence and broaden functionality by leveraging big data, customer usage, and attack activity. The company claims it can enable enterprises to efficiently defend their digital attack surface, pinpoint exposures across their business, and dynamically mitigate cyber threats across web, mobile, and social.

Since 2009, RiskIQ has enabled security staff to reduce the time needed to understand new threats, speed up investigations, and more effectively prevent and remediate incidents. The company says it helps protect some of the largest and most trusted names in financial services, technology, retail, government, healthcare, media, and manufacturing around the world.

Customers include Facebook, DocuSign, Under Armour, Lagardére, and Publishers Clearing House. RiskIQ was recently named a leader for Digital Risk Monitoring and received the highest score for the current offering category in The Forrester Wave: Digital Risk Monitoring, Q3 2016. In the first half of 2016, the company reported year-over-year bookings growth of 80 percent.

“We are pleased to have Georgian Partners as part of our strong investment and advisory team. Georgian, like RiskIQ, was founded by entrepreneurs. We share similar business values and philosophies,” said Lou Manousos, CEO and cofounder of RiskIQ, in a statement. “They know what it takes to develop a business into a customer-focused, long-lasting, and profitable company — values that our entire board of directors shares.”

RiskIQ says it has also penetrated European and Asian markets. It has more than 200 enterprise customers, over 13,000 security analysts using the RiskIQ platform, and hundreds of users subscribing to the RiskIQ PassiveTotal digital threat investigation tool each week.

“RiskIQ has already designed the platform to dominate the Digital Risk Management market, and we are excited to contribute to their success,” said Georgian Partners’ Steve Leightell, who will join the RiskIQ board, in a statement.